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THE 



POETS AND POETRY 



OF 



ENGLAND, 



IN 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



BY 



EUFUS W. GRISWOLD. 



a dsanstless shower 
of light is poesy : 'tis the supkeme of power ; 
tib might half slumbering on its own right arm. 

John Keats. 



SECOND EDITION. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
CAREY & HART, CHESNUT STREET. 



MDCCCXLV. 



^ - .4 



^\^' 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by 
CAREY & HART, 
in the Clerk's Office of tlie District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



stereotyped by L. Jolmson, Phlla. Printad by T. g. Sc V. d- CoUine. 



TO 



CHRIST OHUBCH, OXFORD, 



THE UNIVEBSALLT ESTEEMED REPRESENTATIVE OP HEB BKITANNIC MAJESTY 

IN 



WHO UNITES TO THE ATTAINMENTS OP A SCHOLAB 
THE FINEST SOCIAL QUALITIES, 



THIS VIEW 



THE MODERN POETRY OF HIS COUNTRT 

IS RESPECTFULLT INSCRIBED. 



PREFACE. 



The rise and progress of English poetry form one of the most delightful and 
instructive chapters in the intellectual history of the world. We trace its glim- 
mering dawn in the ballads of the early minstrels, its brilliant morning in the 
Canterbury Tales, and its rich and bold development in the literature of the age 
of Elizabeth, in which British genius reached an elevation unparalleled in the 
history of mankind. Bacon and Hobbes and Coke, Barrow and Taylor and 
Hooker, Raleigh and Selden and Sidney, Spenser and Shakspeare and 
Milton, breathed in the same generation the air of England, and though they 
did not all give a lyrical expression to thought and passion, they were nearly all 
poets, in the truest and highest sense of the word, and they formed with their 
contemporaries the most wonderful constellation of great men that ever adorned 
a nation or an age. 

It is a remark of Hume, that when arts come to perfection in a state they 
necessarily decline, and seldom or never revive there. In England the decline 
of poetry, was as rapid as had been its rise, and in the long interregnum which 
succeeded the Restoration, scarcely a work was produced which has an actual 
and enduring popularity. The artificial school introduced from the Continent by 
the followers of Charles the Second, attained its acme at last, however, in the 
polished numbers of Pope, and a gradual return to nature became visible in the 
productions of Thomson and Cowper and Burns, who ushered in the second 
great era of British literature, a general view of the poetical portion of which I 
have endeavoured to present in this volume. 

There is at the present time, it seems to me, great need of a work of this sort. 
The surveys and selections of English poetry from Chaucer to the close of the 
last century, are numerous, and some of them, especially those of Campbell and 
Hazlitt, are made with singular candour and discernment. But there has 
hitherto been no extensive review of the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century, more 
rich and varied than that of all other periods, excepting only the golden one of 
Shakspeare. 

From those w^hose entire works have been republished in this country, and of 
whom a knowledge may safely be presumed, I have deemed it in some instances 



PREFACE. 



unnecessary to quote very largely, while I have presented comparatively numerous 
selections from several poets who are less familiar to American readers. It is a 
singular fact that while, with the exception of Talfourd, Knowles and Bulwer, 
so few have recently added to the stock of standard acting plays, so many fine 
poems have appeared in the dramatic form. From some of these I have drawn 
with considerable freedom, though less largely than I should have done but for the 
difficulty of doing justice to authors in mere extracts from works of this descrip- 
tion. One of the most striking distinctions of the poetry of this century is un- 
doubtedly discoverable in the great number of deservedly popular lyrics which 
it embraces. In no other period have so many exquisite gems of feeling, thought 
and language been produced. To the best of my judgment I have brought 
together the most admirable of these, with the finest passages of longer poems 
which could not themselves be given entire. 

The merits of Byron and Wordsworth have been amply discussed by recent 
critics on both sides of the Atlantic, and the claims of Shelley begin to attract a 
share of the attention they deserve. If the author of Childe Harold excelled all 
others in the poetry of intense emotion, and the bard of Rydal in that of reflective 
sentiment, Shelley has contributed no less to what is purely imaginative in the 
divine art. The graphic power of Crabbe in dealing with actual and homely 
materials, the picturesque and romantic beauty of Scott, the wildness, sublimity 
and feeling of Coleridge, the gorgeous description and fine reflection of Southey, 
the voluptuous imagery and happy wit of Moore, the elegance and rhetorical 
energy of Campbell, have each in their degree influenced the popular taste ; 
while the classical imagery of Keats, the brilliance and tenderness of Proctor, 
the cheerfulness and humanity of Hunt, and the philosophic repose of Milnes, 
interest the warm sympathies of different readers. 

A taste for poetry is visibly increasing among us, especially for that poetry 
which celebrates the triumphs of humanity, the sacred claims of freedom, the 
holy associations of love, and all the scenes and sentiments which redeem life and 
make hallowed ground of the earth. There is much in the following pages fitted 
to promote and refine such a taste, and that they may essentially contribute to so 
desirable a result is the earnest hope of the editor. 



Fliiladelphia, October 20, 1844. 



CONTENTS. 



GEORGE CRABBE 17 

Slanz.s— "Let me not have Ibis gloomy view" 17 

Recnnciliatiou IS 

VVom.in 18 

The Wretched Mind 19 

The Dream of the Condemned 19 

A Sea Fog 19 

The Sudden Death and Funeral 20 

The Death of Ruth 20 

A Group of Gipsies 20^ 

The Poor-House 21 

Newspapers 21 

WILLIAM SOTllEBY 22 

Rome 22 

Tivnli 23 

The Grotio of Rgeiia 23 

WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES 24 

Discove'V of Madeira 24 

Dreams of Youth 26 

To Time 26 

Retrospection 26 

Funeral of Cliarles the First 27 

Remembrance 27 

On Ihe Rhine 27 

Wrifeo at Os'end 27 

Matilda 27 

SAMUEL ROGERS 2S 

.An Epis'le toa Friend 29 

On 'hs Dea:h of a Sister 30 

The Pleasures of Memory 31 

Loch-Lnng 32 

Ginevra 33 

The Four Eras 33 

Don Garzia 34 

The Fountain 34 

Venice 35 

SIR EGERTON BRYDGES 36 

Echo and Silence 37 

The Approach of Cold Weather 37 

The Winds 37 

Tn Evening 37 

To a Lady in Illness 37* 

To Autumn, near her Departure 37 

To Mary 38 

Hastings' Sonnets 38 

Sonnet on Moor Park 39 

Written August 20, 1807 39 

Written at Paris, May 10, 1825 39 

Written at Paris, May 11, 1827 39 

Written at Lee Priory, August 10, 1826 ...".... 39 

JOANNA BAILLIE 40 

Birthday Lines to Agnes Biillie 41 

To a Child 41 

Christnpher Columbus 42 

Patriotism and Freedom 42 

From " The Traveller by Night" 43 

Constancy 43 

Song — " The morning air plays on my face" 43 

ROBERT BI.OOMFIELD 44 

The BrdEoy 44 

Address to his Native Vale 45 

Harvest Hrme 45 

The Widow lo her Hour-GbbS 45 

JOHN H. FRERE 46 

Proem to a National Work, by William and Robert Whisllecraft . 46 

SirGawiin 47 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 48 

Inscription for a Seat in the Groves of Coleorton 50 

A youthful Poet contemplating Nature 50 

Evening in the Mountains 50 

Skalhig 50 

3u Revisiting the Wye 51 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

Clouds after a Storm 51 

Man never to be Scorned 52 

Obedience and Humility 52 

A Deserted VVife 52 

Chatierton 52 

Picture of a Beggar 52 

A Lover 52 

Longing for Reunion with the Dead .' 52 

A Child wiih a Shell 63 

Apostrophe to the Deity 53 

Communion with Nature 53 

From a Poem on the Power of Sound 53 

Dion 54 

Character of the Happy Warrior 65 

The Power of Virtue . . . > 55 

Intimations of Immortality, from Recollections of Early Childhood 66 

Evening by the Thames ' 57 

Scorn not the Sonnet 58 

Great Men 58 

Milton 58 

Toussaint L'Ouverture 58 

" The World is too much with us" 68 

A Nation's Power not in Armies 58 

A Vision 58 

Childhood 58 

Elegiac Stanzas 69 

Presentiments 60 

To the Daisy 60 

*• She Dwelt among the Untrodden VVays" 61 

OletoDuly 61 

WeareSe\en 62 

Au Incident at Bruges 62 

The Solitary Reaper 63 

Autumn 63 

" She was a Phantom of Delight" 63 

A Mountain Solitude 63 

SIR WALTER SCOTT 64 

The Trial of Constance 66 

Hunting Song 68 

The Cypress Wreath 63 

Lochinvar 6S 

Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu 69 

A Brid,al 69 

The Last Minstrel 70 

'J he Teviot 70 

Hellvellyn 71 

A Scene in Branksome Tower 72 

Farewell to the Muse - 72 

Melrose Abbey 72 

JAMES MONTGOMERY 73 . 

The Grave 74 

The Pillow 75 

Friends 76 

Discovery and Conquest of America 76 

Youth Renewel 77 

The Common Lot 77 

The Stranger and His Friend 77 

Incognita 78 

Speed the Prow 79 

Recluse 79 

The Field of the World 79 

JA.MES HOGG 80 

Kilmeny 81 

The Broken Heart 82 

The Sk\ lark 82 

Queen Mary's Return to Scotland 82 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 83 

Dejection 84 

Youth and Age 86 

Rime of the Ancient Mariner 86 

Love 91 

7 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

The Fains of Sleep P2 

CoucealnieDt 92 

ROBERT SOUTHEY 93 

Ode, written during the Negoti-itions with Bonaparte, in Jan. 1S14 . 95 

The Holly-Tree 9ij 

The Dead Friend 96 

The Battle of Blenheim 97 

Remembrance 97 

Roderick in Battle 98 

Night 98 

Alaodin's Paradise 99 

Listening to Storms 99 

The Childhood of Joan of Arc - 99 

Epitaph 99 

A Sub-Marine City 99 

An Eastern Evening 99 

The Locust Cloud 100 

Evening 100 

Immortality of Love 100 

Stanzas — '* My days among the dead are pass'd" 100 

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 101 

Tamar Relates to Gebir his First Encounter with the Nymph . . 102 

Passage from Count Julian 102 

Faesulan Idyl 103 

To lamhe 103 

To Corinth 103 

Stanzas — " Say ye, that years roll on and ne'er return ?" 104 

Worship God only, from Inez de Castro 104 

The Tamed Dormouse 104 

To a Di-ad Child . . " 104 

On the Death of Robert Southey 104 

Sixteen 104 

Repen'ance of King Roderigo 105 

Morning 105 

Clifton 105 

Passage from Ippolito di Este . . * 105 

A Calhedr.il Scene 105 

Epitaph on a Poet in a Welsh Churchyard 1C5 

The Maid's Lament 106 

The Brier 106 

The Dragon-Fly 106 

An Arab to his Mistress 106 

JOHN LEYDEN 107 

Ode to Jehovah 103 

Ode to an Indian Gold Coin IDS 

Portuguese Hymn to the Virgin 109 

The Memory of the Past 109 

A Morning Scene 109 

Changes of Home 110 

Tevioldale 110 

Serenity of Childhood 110 

CHARLES LAMB Ill 

Farewell to Tobacco 112 

Hester 113 

The Old Familiar Faces 113 

The Family Name 113 

Sonnet — " We were two pretty habes^* 113 

THOMAS CAMPBELL 114 

Lochiel's Warning 115 

The Last Man IIB 

"Ye Mariners of England" • . 116 

Battle of the Baltic 117 

Exile of Erin 117 

Valedictory Stanzas to J. P. Kemble, Esq 118 

The Soldier's Dream IIS 

Description of Wyoming 119 

Dirge of Outalissi 119 

The Fall of Poland 120 

Hohenlinden 120 

Caroline 120 

O'Connor's Child 121 

The Last Scene in Gertrude of Wyoming 123 

The Beech tree's Petition 123 

WILLIAM HERBERT 124 

The Phantom Fight 125 

The Descent to Hela 126 

Solitude 129 

Futurity , 129 

Jealousy 129 

The Mother's Plea 130 

The Battle Field 131 



WII.t.IAM HERBERT 

Hi mil to Death 132 

Aelius the Unbeliever 133 

Woman 133 

Fareivell 133 

Washington 134 

SIR HUMPHRY DAVY 135 

The Tempest 135 

Fontainebleau 136 

Written after Recovery from a Dangerous Illness 136 

On the Dealh of Lord Byron 137 

Mont Blanc 137 

The Sybil's Temple 137 

A Fragment 138 

The Eagles 138 

The Fire Flies 138 

Life 138 

Thought 138 

JOHN HERMAN MERIVALE 139 

Ode on the Deliverance of Europe, 1814 139 

From Rufinus 140 

The Pursuit of Learning 140 

Answer to a Charge of Inconstancy 140 

HORACE SMITH .141 

Hymn to the Flowers 141 

The Head of Meuinon 142 

Moral Ruins 143 

Address to an Egyptian Mummy 143 

To the Alabaster Sarcophagus 144 

Moral Alchemy 145 

THOMAS MOORE 146 

The Fire- Worshippers 147 

" The Harp that once through Tara's Halls" 165 

Eveleen's Bower 165 

" All that's bright must fade" 165 

"Oft, in the stilly nighf 166 

Sacred Song 166 

" Has sorrow thy young days shaded ?" 166 

"Oh, no! — not even when first we loved" 166 

CALEB C. COLTON 167 

The Conflagration of Moscow 168 

Life 170 

Irregular Ode, on the Death of Lord Byron 171 

JOHN KENYON 172 

To the Moon 172 

* The Broken Appointment 173 

EEENEZER ELLIOTT 174 

Bothwell —A Dramatic Poem 175 

On Seeing Audubon's " Birds of America" 179 

The Press '79 

The Dyins Boy to the Sloe Blossom 180 

Come and Gone 180 

Forest Worship 181 

Ribbledin, or the Christening 182 

The Wonders of the Lane 183 

Hymn—" Nurse of the Pilgrim sires, who sought" 183 

Thomas 184 

Sleep 184 

The Pilgrim Fathers 185 

A Ghost at Noon 185 

Corn Law Hymn 185 

Flowers for the Heart 185 

REGINALD HEBER 186 

Christmas Hymn 187 

The Widow of Nain 187 

" Thou art gone to the grave" 187 

Snng — " There is, they say, a secret well" 187 

Farewell 187 

Mii^sionary Hymn 1^8 

The British Bow 188 

Verses to Mrs. Heber . . ' 188 

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM 189 

" A wet sheet and a flowing sea" 190 

Gentle Hugh Herries 190 

The Poet's Bridal-day Song 190 

"Ii's Hame and it's Hame" 191 

" The shepherd seeks his glowing hearth" 191 

" Awake, my love !" 191 

'' My ain counlree" 191 

BERNARD BARTON 192 

Spiritual Worship 192 



CONTENTS. 



BERNARD BARTON. 

To the Skylark 192 

Children of Light 193 

To Mary 193 

ToaProBle 193 

Farewell 193 

LEIGH HUNT 194 

Exlracls from the Legend of Florence 195 

Agnlinti and his Lady 195 

A Domestic Scene 195 

Fancy 196 

To Lord Byron, on hia Departure for Italy and Greece 197 

The Fatal Passion 198 

Kosciusko 202 

Ariadne 202 

Mahmoud 203 

Power and Gentleness 203 

The Glove and Ihe Lions 204 

An Angel in the House 204 

A Heaven upon Earth 204 

The Ravenna Pine Forest 204 

The Nile 205 

Abou Ben Adhem an 1 the Angel 205 

Spring in Ravenna 205 

To a Child, during Sickness 205 

BRYAN W. PROCTOR 206 

The Rising of the North 207 

Stanzas — ** That was not a barren time" 207 

The Return of the Admiral 208 

Forbidden Love 208 

A Repose 208 

A Storm 209 

" I die for thy sweet love" 209 

A Petition to Time 209 

A Chamber Scene 209 

The Lake has Burst 210 

The VVeaver's Song . 210 

A Prayer in Sickness 210 

The Stormy Petrel 210 

The Sea 211 

" Softly woo away her breath" 21 ! 

" A deep and a mighty shadow" 211 

TheQuatroon 211 

An Epitaph 211 

To the South Wind - 212 



Mu 



212 



Flowers 212 

Remembered Love 212 

Kings 212 

Night Thoughts 212 

Happiness 212 

To the Singer Pasta 213 

Address to the Ocean 213 

HENRY KIRKE WHITE 214 

The Savoyard's Return 214 

Canzonet 214 

" I'm pleased, and yet I'm sad" 215 

To Consumption 215 

The Star of Bethlehem 215 

To an Early Primrose 215 

LORD BYRON 216 

The Lament of Tasso 218 

The Dream 220 

The Prisoner of Chillon 221 

Waterloo 225 

Monody on the Death of the Right Hon. R. B. Sheridan .... 225 

The Isles of Greece 226 

Soliloquy of Manfred 227 

Cecilia Metella 228 

The Ocean 228 

To Thyrza 229 

Stanzas—" Away, away, ye notes of wo" 229 

To Thyrza 230 

" Adieu, adieu ! my native shore" 230 

The EiecutioD of Hujo 231 

Death of Lara 232 

The Destruction of Sennacherib 234 

Evening 234 

The Fate of Beauty 235 

" She walks in beauty" 235 

To Mary 235 

"Oh! snatched away in beauty's bloom" 236 

Manfred lo Ihe Sorceress 236 

"On this day I complete my thirty-sixth year" 236 

2 



THOMAS PRINGLE i . 237 

" Afar in Ihe Desert" 237 

The Bechuana Boy 238 

WILLIAM PETER 240 

Damon and Pythias 240 

Theckla 241 

The Ideal 242 

Christian Love 242 

The Penitent 243 

On a Dear Child 243 

Twydee 243 

RANN KENNEDY 244 

Domestic Bliss 244 

The Merry Bells of England 244 

Ambition 244 

JOHN WILSON 245 

To a Sleeping Child 246 

The Three Seasons of Love 247 

The Hunter 247 

Signs of the Plague 248 

The Plague lu the City 248 

The Ship 248 

Lines written in a Lonely Burial Ground 249 

Address to a Wild Deer 250 

Lines written in a Highland Glen 250 

JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES 251 

Love's Artifice 251 

Last Scene in John di Procida 252 

The Growth of Love 253 

Artifice Disowned by Love 254 

Pride of Rank 254 

Tell among the Mountains 254 

Lost Freedom of Switzerland 254 

Virginius in the Forum 254 

MRS. SOUTHEY 255 

The Welcome Home 256 

Angling 256 

Autumn Flowers 257 

The Pa-.ipcr's Death-be 1 257 

The Mariner's Hymn 257 

HENRY HART MILMAN 258 

Rowena 259 

Lamentation over Jeru'alem 259 

Hymn by the Euphrates 260 

Jewish Hymn in Babylon 260 

Ode, to the Saviour 261 

The Merry Heart •. 261 

Marriage Hymn 261 

Evening Song of Maidens 262 

Chorus — " King of kings ! and Lord of lords I" 262 

Funeral Anthem 263 

1 he Usurer 263 

Eenina lo Belshazzar « 263 

JOHN KEBLE 264 

Advent Sunday 264 

The Flowers of the Field 265 

The Nightingale 265 

Forest Leaves in Autumn 266 

Dimness 266 

Address to Poets 267 

The United States 267 

Champions of Ihe Truth 267 

CHARLES WOLFE 268 

The Burial of Sir John Moore 268 

"Oh, my love has an eye of the softest blue" 269 

"Oh, s.ay nut that my heart is cold" 269 

"If I had thought thou couldsl have died" 269 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 270 

The Sensitive Plant 272 

Love 274 

The Unattained 274 

Dedication lo The Revolt of Islam 275 

From Alastor, or the Spirit of Solilule 276 

Alaslor and Ihe Swan 276 

From The Revolt of Islam 277 

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 277 

Song — Rarely, rarely, comest thou 278 

Death and Sleep I . . 278 

A Picture 279 

Spring 279 

From Adonais: An Elegy on Ihe Death of John Keats . . . . . 280 
" The serpent is shut out from Paradise" « • . . 280 



PERCY BVSSHE SHELLEY. 

Liberty 281 

A Lamenl 28ii 

" The sun is "arm, the sky is clear" 2g2 

The Hours, froni Prometheus 282 

To a Skylarli 283 

Love's Philosopliy 283 

The Cloud 284 

Stanzas, written in Dejection, near Naples 284 

The Fugitives 285 

To the Queen of my Heart 285 

FELICIA HEMANS 286 

Joan of Arc in Rheims 237 

The American Forest Girl 2B7 

The Stranger in Louisiana 288 

" Leave me not yef 288 

The Traveller at the Source of the Nile 2S9 

The Palm-tree 289 

The Bride's Farewell 290 

The Homes of Ecgland , . 290 

The Hour of Death 290 

Mozart's Requiem 291 

The Dyin? Improvisatore 291 

The Childe's Destiny 292 

The Landing of fne Pilgrim Fathers 292 

Bernardo del Carpro 293 

Attraction of the East 293 

Kindred Hearts 294 

Hymn of the Mountain Christian 294 

Washington's Staiue 294 

The Lost Pleiad 295 

The Fountain of Oblivion 295 

A Parting Song 295 

Thoughts During Sickness 296 

Intellectual Powers 296 

Sickness like Night 296 

Re zsch's Design, the Angel of Death 296 

Reme.nbrance of Nature 296 

Flight of the Spirit 296 

Flowers 296 

Recovery 296 

To a Family Bible 296 

SERJEANT TALFOURD 297 

Verses to the Memory of a Child na^iied after Charles Lamb . . .298 

Lines writlen at the Needles Hotel 298 

Kindness 2P9 

To the Memory of the Poets 299 

Ion described by Agenor 300 

Ion receiiing the Sacrificial Knife from Ctesiphou . . . . . .300 

Ion at the Entrance of a Foie>t 3C0 

Fame 300 

To the Thames at Westminster 300 

JOHN KEATS 301 

The Eve of S'. Agnes 302 

Hymn to Pan 305 

Adonis 303 

To Hope 3 6 

Sovereignty of Love 307 

Ole to a Nightingale 307 

To Autumn 308 

Ode on a Grecian Urn 308 

Ou first Seeing Chapman's Homer 3 8 

On the Grasshopper and Cricket 308 

Regalities 309 

Adonis Sleeping 309 

A Fairy Scene from End) mion 309 

Sleep 309 

Scenes of Boyhood 309 

The Moon 310 

Robin Hood 310 

Fancy 311 

Lines on the Mermaid Tavern 311 

THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY 312 

The First Gray Hair 313 

The Soldier's Tear 313 

'• Wither Away" 313 

"I'm saddest v» hen I sing" 314 

" I never was a favoui lie" 314 

*' She wore a wreath of roses" 314 

" The rose that all are praising" 315 

" She never blamed him" 315 

" She would not know me" 315 

The Old Kirk Yard 315 



THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY. 

"Grief wai sent thee foi thy good" 315 

" 1 turn to thee in time of need" . , , . « 316 

'* Oh, no 1 we never mention her" 316 

'' " Isle of Beauty, fare thee well" 316 

" I'd be a butterfly" 316 

GEORGE CROLY 317 

The Aueel of the World 318 

A Scene liom Catiline 323 

Astrology 324 

Jacob's Dream 325 

An Aurori Borealis 325 

Rebelliou 325 

The Alhambra 326 

A Lover's Oah 326 

A Meeting of Magicians 326 

The Stars 326 

Pericles and Aspasia 327 

Leonidas 327 

A Dirge 327 

A Parisian Fauxbourg _ . . 328 

The Grievings of a Proud Spirit ' . . 328 

ElTect of Oratory upon a Multitude 32S 

Love an Evil 328 

Jewels 328 

Mountaineers 328 

WILLIAM MOTHERWELL 329 

"My heid is like to rend, Willie" 329 

" The via'er ! the water !" 330 

Jeanie Morrison 330 

Lines given to a Friend a day or two before the Decease of the Writer 331 

"0 agony', keen agony '." 331 

" They come ! the merry summer mouths" 332 

" I am not sad" 332 

" Beneath a placid brow" 333 

The Cavalier's Song '. 333 

"What is glory? What is fame J" 333 

THOMAS HOOD 334 

The Dream of Eugene Aram . . . • 334 

The Sylvan Fairy 336 

Ariel and the Suicide 336 

Fair lues 337 

" Sigh on, sa.l heart !" 337 

The Song of the Shirt 338 

Silence 338 

Death 338 

Ode — "Oh! well may poets make a fuss" 339 

From an Ode to M.-lancholy 339 

" 1 reniemt'er, 1 remember," 340 

To a Cold Beauty . . 340 



Lov 



340 



By .- Lover 340 

ROBERT POLLOK 341 

Byron 341 

The Millennium S42 

The Authors Account of Himself 443 

Reputation 344 

Rumour and Slander 344 

Wisdom 344 

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 345 

Horatius 345 

The Baltic of Ivry 350 

The Cavalier's March to London 351 

The Spanish Armada 352 

A Song of the Huguenots 353 

D. M. MOIR 354 

A Lover to Ins Betrothed 354 

Wee Willie 335 

Midnight 356 

" Weep not for her" 366 

Flodden Field 356 

EDWARD MOXON 357 

To the Muse 357 

Love 358 

A Dream 358 

Life 358 

Walton 358 

Scenes of Childhood 358 

Sidney 358 

Solace derived from Books 359 

To a Bird 359 

A Mother Singing 359 

Poesy 369 



CONTENTS. 



11 



EDWARD MOXON 



To- 



Rouen 359 

Piely 359 

MRS. NORTON 360 

Dedication o' 'he Hreani to the Duchess of Sulherland 361 

Extract froDi the Dream 361 

To my Books 361 

Twilight 362 

The Blind Man to his Bride 363 

The Sense of Beauty 364 

The Mother's Heart 365 

The Child of Earth 365 

Alarixia 366 

The Widow to her Son's Betrothed 367 

" Weep not for him that dieth" 367 

The Arab's Farewell to his Horse 368 

" We have been friends together" 368 

Recollections 369 

" Be frank with me, and I accept my lot" 369 

The Fallen Leaves 369 

The Careless Word 37O 

The Mourners 37O 

" Like an enfranchised bird" 370 

JOHN STERLING 371 

To a Child 37I 

Prose and Song 37I 

Aphrodite 372 

Hymns of a Hermit 375 

The Dearest 37S 

Joan D'Arc 379 

Alfred the Harper 382 

The Poet's Home 383 

Mirabeau 384 

L0U19 XV 384 

Daedalus 385 

The Ages 385 

The Husbandmaa 386 

The Penitent 366 

The Moss Rose 367 

The Song of Eve to Cain 387 

MRS. MACLEAN (L. E. L.) 388 

The factory 389 

The Minstrel's Monitor 390 

The Feast of Life 390 

Experience 390 

The Carrier-PtgeoQ Returned 391 

Success alone seen 391 

" Oh, no I my heart can never be" 392 

Necessity 392 

Memory 393 

Resolves 393 

'• We might have been !" 393 

" A long while ago" 394 

"Can you forget me?" 394 

The Farewell 394 

Calypso watching the Ocean 395 

Despon lency 395 

The Wrongs of Love 396 

The old Times 396 

Crescentius 396 

" I pray thee let me weep to-night" 397 

Weakness ends with Love 397 

Affection 397 

Age and Youth ' 397 

Bilter Experience 397 

The Poet's First Essay 397 

CHARLES SWAIN 398 

The Lyre 398 

" The kind old friendly feelings" 393 

Recollections 399 

" Forgive and forget" 399 

•* Let us love one another" 399 

"If thou hast lost a friend" 400 

The first Prayer 400 

The Chamois Hunters 400 

The Bird of Hope 400 

SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON 401 

Cromwell's Soliloquy overthe Dead Body of Charles 402 

Cromwell's Reflections OD "Killing no Murder" 402 

Richelieu's Soliloquy 403 

Ambition and Glory 403 



Last Days of Queen Elizabeth 404 

Tlie Language of the Eyes 405 

Euripides 406 

A Spendthrift 406 

Patience and Hope 406 

Love and Fame 405 

The Last Crusader 407 

The Sabbath 407 

HENRY TAYLOR 408 

The Lay of Elena 409 

From Philip Van Artevelde 412 

Repose of the Heart 412 

Approach of Morning 412 

Artevelde's Love for Adriana 413 

Greatness and Success 413 

Two Characters 413 

Repentance and Improvement 4J3 

Artevelde's Character of his Wife 413 

Artevelde's Vision of his Wife, the Night before his Death . . 414 

Character of Artevelde by the Duke of Burgundy 414 

Famine in a besieged City 414 

From Edwin the Fair 414 

The Voice of the Wind 414 

Dunslan's Account of his Temptations 415 

Calmness and Retrospection 415 

A Soliloquy of Leolf 415 

A Scholar 415 

Dunstau on the Death of his Mother 415 

r. K. HERVEY 416 

I-o's 416 

Ctopatra embarking on the Cydnu 416 

The Grotto of Egeria 417 

The Temple of Jupiter Olympus, at Athens 417 

"Slumber lie soft on thy beautiful eye," 4I8 

To Myra 4,9 

Stauzas to a Lady 41s 

Hope 419 

Homes and Graves 419 

A Vision of the Stars 430 

The Convict Ship 421 

" I'm all alone," 421 

To Mary 421 

ELIZABETH B. BARRF, TT 422 

Cowper's Grave 423 

Napoleon's Return 424 

The Cry nf the Children 1 425 

Seraph and Poet 426 

The Lay of the Rose 427 

My Doves 428 

Romaunl of Margret 429 

The Deserted Garden 431 

" Loved once" , 432 

The Sleep 433 

Earth 433 

The Student 434 

The Cry of the Human 434 

The Child and the Watcher 435 

Caterina to Camoens 436 

Despair 437 

The Departed 437 

" What are we set on earth for ?" 437 

The Spinning-wheel 437 

The Soul's Expression 437 

WINTHROP MACKWORTH FRAED 433 

The Red Fisherman 435 

Tlie Vicar 440 

School and School-fellows 441 

Memory , , , - 442 

Josephine 442 

" I know that it must be" 443 

Time's Changes 443 

The Belle of the Ball 444 

ALFRED TENNYSON 445 

Locksley Hall 446 

Godiva 449 

Recollections of the Arabian Nights 450 



. 451 



Mariana . . 

Sir Galahad 452 

The Ballad of Oriana 452 

The Talking Oak 453 

The Lady of Shalott 456 

Dora. 457 

Circumstance 4&g 



GEORGE DARLEY 459 

A Scene from Ethelstan . > 459 

A Song from Ethelstan 460 

Song of the Summer Winds 461 

The Gambols of Children 461 

A Village Blacksmith 461 

Suicide 461 

The Fairies 461 

A Rural Retreat 462 

THOMAS WADE 463 

A Prophecy 463 

Volition 463 

The Bride 463 

The Poetry of Earth 463 

The Sere Oak Leaves 463 

The Swan Aviary 463 

ROBERT BROWNING 464 

ExIracI from Paracelsus 464 

Extrac s from Sordello 463 

Caryatides by Sunset 465 

Egl'amor 465 

All Incident at Ralisbon 465 

RICHARn HENRY HORNE 466 

Extracts from Orioa 466 

The First Appearance of Orion 466 

Morning 466 

Simimer Noon 467 

Building of the Palace of Poseidon 467 

Orion's Extirpation of the Beasts from Chios 467 

Restoration of Orion 467 

FRANCES KEMBLE BUTLER 469 

The Prayer of a Lonely Heart 469 

On a Forget-me-not, brought from Switzerland 469 

Oil a Musicil Box 470 

A Wish 470 

Lilies written in London 470 

Fragment 470 

The Vision of Life 471 

A Promise 471 

To the Nightingale 471 

Lines written after leaving West Point 472 

To a Picture 472 

" Tliere's not a fibre in my trembling frame" 472 

Ambition 472 

To 472 

Venice 472 

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES 473 

Lonely Maturity 473 

The Lay of the Humble 474 

On 475 

Prayer 473 

Not wholly just 476 

The Palsy of the Heart 476 

A Prayer 476 

Youth and Manhood 477 

Fast Friendship 477 

Delphi, an Ele?y ' 477 

The Patience of the Poor 478 

The Tragedy of the Lac de Gaube, in the Pyrenees 478 

The Voice of the People 479 

Alms-giving » 480 



RICHAHD MONCKTON MILNES. 

Labour .... 480 

The Voices of History 481 

Naples and Venice 482 

^ Pastoral Song 483 

Song of Thoughts 483 

Rich and Poor 4S3 

" Because, from all that round thee move" 484 

The Friendship Flower 484 

The Men of Old 484 

On I^dy C , in declining Health 485 

The Long-Ago 485 

Prince Emilius of Hesse-Darmstadt 486 

P. J. BAILEY 487 

Festus describes his Friend 487 

Ans^ela 488 

Calmness of the Sublime . 488 

Faith 489 

Great Tlioughts 489 

A Letter ' 489 

Truth and Sorrow 4S9 

The Ends of Life 489 

The Poet 489 

HENRY ALFORD 490 

A Churchyard Colloquy 490 

Academe 491 

A Memory 491 

A Funeral 491 

" The Master is come, and calleth for thee" 491 

Beauty of Nature 491 

A Spiritual and well-ordered Mind 492 

Morning Hymn for All-Saints' Day 492 

A Doubt 492 

ELIZA COOK 493 

The Mourners 493 

The Wreaths 494 

" He led her to the altar" 494 

A Love Song 494 

The Free 495 

The Old Arm-chair 495 

My Grave 495 

" There's a star in the west" 496 

" Mourn not the dead" 496 

"The loved one was not there" 496 

The Quiet Eye 496 

Song of the Hempseed 497 

Washington 498 

Our Native Song 498 

B, SIMMONS 499 

The Disinterment 499 

View on the Hudson SCO 

Death-chant for the Sultan Mahmoud 501 

F. W. FABER 602 

King's Bridge 602 

Childhood 503 

The Glimpse 503 

The Perplexity 503 

To a Little Boy 504 

The After-Slate 504 

The Wheels 604 

The Signs of the Times 501 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PORTRAIT OF LORD BYRON . . . . Engraved by G. H. Cushman . . .Frontispiece. 

STAMBOUL G. H. Cushman . . Vignette title. 

INCOGNITA J. Cheney 78 

EARLY DAYS OF WASHINGTON W. Humphreys 134 

THE ANGEL VISITOR . J. Cheney 204 

FAIR INEZ J. Cheney 337 

VIOLA , J. Cheney 371 



13 



GEORGE CRABBE 



This poet was born on the twenty-fourth of 
December, 1754, at Aldborough, in Suffolk, 
where his father and grandfather were officers 
of the customs. At the school where he re- 
ceived his education he gained a prize for one 
of his poems ; and on leaving it he became an 
apprentice to a surgeon and apothecary in his 
native village. On the completion of his ap- 
prenticeship, abandoning all hope of success 
in his profession, he went to London to com- 
mence a life of authorship. Unknown and 
unfriended, he endeavoured in vain to induce 
the booksellers to publish his writings. At 
length, in 1780, two years after his arrival in 
the great metropolis, he ventured to print at 
his own expense a poem entitled " The Can- 
didate," which was favourably received. He 
was soon after introduced to Edmund Burke, 
who became his friend and patron, and pre- 
sented him to Fox and other eminent con- 
temporaries. In 1781 he published "The 
Library," and was ordained a deacon. In the 
following year he became curate of Ald- 
borough, and in 1783 he entered his name at 
Trinity Hall, Cambridge ; but left the Uni- 
versity without graduating, though he was 
subsequently presented with the degree of 
B. C. L. After residing for a considerable 
period at Belvoir Castle, as chaplain to tlie 
Duke of Rutland, he was introduced to the 
Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who bestowed 
upon him successively the living of Frome 
St. Quintin, in Dorsetshire, and the rectories 
of Muston and West Allington in the diocese 
of Lincoln. In 1807 he published a com- 
plete edition of his works then written, which 
was received with general applause. Three 
years afterward appeared "The Borough;" in 



1812, his "Tales;" and in 1819, his "Tales 
of the Hall." He died at Trowbridge, in 
Wiltshire, in February, 1832. 

As a man, Crabbe was admired and loved by 
all who knew him. Lockhart, in describing 
his person, says "his noble forehead, his 
bright beaming eye — without any thing of 
old age about it, though he was then above 
seventy — his sweet and innocent smile, and the 
calm, mellow tones of his voice, all are repro- 
duced the moment I open any page of his poet- 
ry." A perfect edition of his poetical writings, 
with a graceful and sensible memoir by his son, 
has been issued by Murray, since his death. 

The lovers of homely truth may appeal to 
Crabbe in proof that its sternest utterance is 
dramatic. No poet has ventured to rely more 
entirely on fact. He paints without delicacy, 
but his touches are so very literal as to be 
striking and effective. The poor have found 
in him their ablest annalist. The most gloomy 
phases of life are described in his tales with 
an integrity that has rendered them almost as 
imposing as a tragedy. The interest awaken- 
ed by his pictures is often fearful, merely 
from their appalling truth and touching mi- 
nuteness. He was a manwrisf, and some of 
the features of his mannerism — his monoto- 
nous versification, and minute portraitures of 
worthless characters, with their rude jests and 
familiar moralizing — are unpleasing ; but his 
powerful and graphic delineations of humble 
life, his occasional touches of deepest tender- 
ness, and the profoundness of his wisdom, 
mark not less strongly than these blemishes, 
all that he wrote, nnd will keep green his 
reputation while the world we live in is the 
scene of sin and suffering. 



STANZAS. 

Let me not have this gloomy view 

About my room, around my bed ; 
But morning roses, wet with dew, 

To cool my burning brows instead. 
As flowers that once in Eden grew. 

Let them their fragrant spirits shed; 
And every day the sweets renew, 

Till I, a fading flower, am dead. 
3 



Oh ! let the herbs I loved to rear 

Give to my sense their perfumed breath ; 
Let them be placed about my bier, 

And grace the gloomy house of death. 
I '11 have my grave beneath a hill, 

Where only I^ucy's self shall know ; 
Where runs the pure pellucid rill 

Upon its gravelly bed below : 
There violets on the borders blow. 

And insects their soft light display, — 
B2 17 



18 



GEORGE CRABBE. 



69 



Till, as the morning fsunbeams glow, 
The cold phosphoric fires decay. 

That is the grave to Lucy shown, — 

The soil a pure and silver sand, 
The green, cold moss above it grown, 

Unpluck'd of all but maiden hand : 
In virgin earth, till then unturn'd, 

There let my maiden form be laid, 
Nor let my changed clay be spurn'd. 

Nor for new guest that bed be made. 

There will the lark, — the lamb, in sport, 

In air, — on earth, — securely play, 
And Lucy to my grave resort, 

As innocent, — but not so gay. 
I will not have the churchyard ground. 

With bones all black and ugly grown, 
To press my shivering body round, 

Or on my wasted limbs be thrown. 

With ribs and skulls I wilt not sleep. 

In clammy beds of cold blue clay. 
Through which the ringed earth-worms creep ; 

And on the shrouded bosom prey ; 
I will not have the bell proclaim 

When those sad marriage rites begin, — 
And boys, without regard or shame. 

Press the vile mouldering masses in. 

Say not, it is beneath my care ; 

I cannot these cold truths allow: — 
These thoughts may not afflict me there. 

But, oh ! they vex and tease me now. 
Raise not a turf, nor set a stone. 

That man a maiden's grave may trace ; 
But thou, my Lucy, come alone, 

And let affection find the place. 

Oh ! take me from a world I hate, — 

Men cruel, selfish, sensual, cold ; 
And, in some pure and blessed state, 

I-et me my sister minds behold : 
From gross and sordid views refined. 

Our heaven of spotless love to share, — 
For only generous souls dcsign'd, 

And not a man to meet us there. 



RECONCILIATION. 

Mr Damon was the first to wake 

The gentle flame that caimot die ; 
My Damon is the last to take 

The faithful bosom's softest sigh : 
The life between is nothing worth, 

Oh ! cast it from my thought away ; 
Think of the day that gave it birth. 

And this, its sweet returning day. 

Buried be all that has been done. 

Or say that naught is done amiss ; 
For who the dangerous path can shun 

In such bewildering v\'orld as this? 
But love can every fault forgive. 

Or with a tender look reprove; 
And now let naught in memory live. 

But that we meet, and that we love. 



WOMAN. 

Place the white man on Afric's coast. 

Whose swarthy sons in blood delight, 
Who of their scorn to Europe boast. 

And paint their very demons white: 
There, while the sterner sex disdains 

To soothe the woes they cannot feel. 
Woman will strive to heal his pains, 

And weep for those she cannot heal. 
Hers is warm pity's sacred glow, — 

From all her stores she bears a part ; 
And bids the spring of hope reflow. 

That languished in the fainting heart. 
" What though so pale his haggard face. 

So sunk and sad his looks," — she cries : 
" And far unlike our nobler race, 

With crisped locks and rolling eyes; 
Yet misery marks him of our kind, — 

We see him lost, alone, afraid ! 
And pangs of body, griefs in mind, 

Pronounce him man, and ask our aid. 
« Perhaps in some far distant shore 

There are who in these forms delight; 
Whose milky features please them more 

Than ours of jet, thus burnish'd bright ; 
Of such may be his weeping wife. 

Such children for their sire may call ; 
And if we spare his ebbing life, 

Our kindness may preserve them all." 
Thus her compassion woman shows ; 

Beneath the line her acts are these ; 
Nor the wide waste of Lapland snows 

Can her warm flow of pity freeze ; — 
" From some sad land the stranger comes, 

Where joys like ours are never found ; 
Let 's soothe him in our happy homes. 

Where freedom sits, with plenty crown'd. 
"'Tis good the fainting soul to cheer. 

To see the famish'd stranger fed ; 
To milk for him the mother-deer. 

To smooth for him the furry bed. 
The powers above our Lapland bless 

With good no other people know ; 
T' enlarge the joys that we possess. 

By feeling those that we bestow !" 
Thus, in extremes of cold and heat, 

Where wandering man may trace his kind ; 
Wherever grief and want retreat, 

In woman they compassion find : 
She makes the female breast her seat. 

And dictates mercy to the mind. 

Man may the sterner virtues know, 

Determined justice, truth severe ; 
But female hearts with pity glow, 

And woman holds affliction dear : 
For guiltless woes her sorrows flow. 

And suffering vice compels her tear, — 
'Tis hers to soothe the ills below. 

And bid life's fairer views appear. 
To woman's gentle kind we owe 

What comforts and delights us here ; 
They its gay hopes on youth bestow. 

And care they soothe — and age they cheer. 



GEORGE CRABBE. 



19 



THE WRETCHED MIND. 

Til' unhay)py man was found, 
The spirit settled, but the reason drown'd ; 
And all the dreadful tempest died away, 
To the dull stillness of the misty day ! 

And now his freedom he attain'd — if free 
The lost to reason, truth, and hope, can be ; 
The pliyful children of the ])lace he meets ; 
Playful with them he rambles through the streets; 
In all they need, his stronger arm he lends, 
And his lost mind to these ajiprovina; friends. 

That gentle maid, vvhom once the youth had 
Is now with mild religious pity moved ; [loved, 
Kindly she chides his boyish flights, while he 
Will for a moment fix'd and pensive be ; 
And as she trembling speaks, his lively eyes 
Explore her looks, he listens to her sighs; [vade 
Charm'd by her voice, the harmonious sounds in- 
His clouded mind, and for a time persuade : 
liike a i)lca3ed infant, who has newly caught. 
From the maternal glance, a gleam of thought ; 
He stands enrapt, the half-known voice to hear. 
And starts, half-conscious, at the falling tear ! 

Rarely from town, nor then unwatcli'd^ he goes, 
In darker mood, as if to hide his woes ; 
But, soorr returning, with impatience seeks [speaks; 
His youthful friends, and shouts, and sings, and 
Speaks a wild speech, with action all as wild — 
The children's leader, and himself a child ; 
He spins their top, or, at their bidding, bends 
His bark, while o'er it leap his laughing friends ; 
Simple and weak, he acts the boy once more. 
And heedless children call him Silly Shore. 



THE DREAM OF THE CONDEMNED. 

When first I came 
Within his view, I fancied there was shame, 
I judged resentment ; I mistook the air — 
These fainter passions live not witli despair ; 
Or but exist and die : — Hope, fear, and love, 
Joy, doubt, and hate, may other spirits move, 
But touch not his, who every waking hour 
Has one fix'd dread, and always feels its power. 
He takes his tasteless food; and, when 'tis done, 
Counts up his meals, now lessen'd by that one ; 
For expectation is on time intent. 
Whether he brings us joy or punishment. 

Yes i e'en in sleep th' impressions all remain ; 
He hears the sentence, and he feels the chain ; 
He seems the place for that sad act to see. 
And dreams the very thirst which then will be ! 
A priest attends — it seems the one he knew 
In his best days, beneath whose care he grew. 

At this his terrors take a sudden flight — 
He sees his native village v^'ith delight; 
The house, the chamber, where he once array'd 
His youthful person ; where he knelt and pray'd : 
Then too the comforts he enjoy'd at home. 
The days of joy ; the joys themselves are come ; — 



The hours of innocence; the timid look 
Of his loved maid, when first her hand he took 
And told his hope; her trembling joy appears, 
Her forced reserve, and his retreating fears. 

" Yes ! all are with him now, and all the while 
Life's early prospects and his Fanny smile : 
Then come his .sister and his village friend. 
And he will now the sweetest moments spend 
Life has to yitlcf: — No ! never will he find 
Again on earth such pleasure in his mind. 
He goes through shrubby walks these friends among, 
Love in their looks and pleasure on their tongue. 
Pierced by no crime, and urged by no desire 
For more than true and honest hearts require, 
They feel the calm delight, and thus proceed' 
Through the green lane, — then lingerin the mead, — 
Stray o'er the heath in all its purple bloom, 
And pluck the blossom where the wild bees hum; 
Then through the broomy liound with ease they pass, 
And press the sandy sheep-walk's slender grass. 
Where dwarfish flowers among the gorse are spread. 
And the lamb browses hy the llnnefs bed! [way 
Then 'cross the bounding brook they make their 
O'er its rough iiridge — and there behold the bay ! — 
The ocean smiling to the fervid sun — 
The waves that fiintly fall and slowly run — 
The ships at distance, and the boats at hand : 
And now they walk upon the sea-side sand. 
Counting the number, and what kind they be, 
Ships softly sinking in the sleepy sea; 
Now arm in arm, now parted, they behold 
The glittering waters on the shingles roll'd : 
The timid girls, half-dreading their design. 
Dip the small foot in the retarded brine, [flow, 
And search for crimson weeds, which spreading 
Or lie like pictures on the sand below ; 
With all those bright red pebbles, that the sun 
Through the small waves so softly shines upon ; 
And those live-lucid jellies which the eye 
Delights to trace as they swim glittering by : 
Pearl-shells and rubied star-fish they admire, 
And will arrange above the parlour fire — 
Tokens of bliss !'' 



A SEA FOG. 

When all you see through densest foar is seen ; 
When you can hear the fishers near at hand 
Distinctly speak, yet see not where they stand ; 
Or sometimes them and not their boat discern, 
Or, half-conceal'd, some figure at the stern ; 
Boys who, on shore, to sea the pebble cast, 
Will hear it strike against the vievsdess mast; 
While the stern boatman growls bis fierce disdain. 
At whom he knows not, whom he threats in vain. 

'T is pleasant then to view the nets float past, 
Net after net, till you have seen the last ; 
And as you wait till all beyond you slip, 
A boat comes gliding from an anchor'd ship, 
Breaking the silence with the dipping oar, 
And their own tones, as labouring for the shore; 
Those measured tones with which the scene agree, 
And give a sadness to serenity. 



20 



GEORGE CRABBE, 



THE SUDDEN DEATH AND FUNERAL. 

Thes (lied lamented, in the strength of life, 
A valued mother and a faithful wife, 
Call'd not away, when time had loosed each hold 
On the fond heart, and each desire grew cold; 
But when, to all that knit us to our kind, 
She felt fast bound as charity can bind ; — 
Not when the ills of age, its pain, its care, 
The drooriino spirit for its fate prepare ; 
And, each atiection failing, leaves the heart 
Loosed from life's charm, and willing to depart ; — 
But all her ties the strong invader broke, 
In all their strength, by one tremendous stroke ! 
Sudden and swift the eager pest came on, 
And terror grew, till every hope was gone : 
Still those around appeared for hope to seek ! 
But view'd the sick, and were afraid to speak. — 

Slowly they bore, with solemn step, the dead. 
When grief grew loud and bitter tears were shed : 
My part began ; a crovs'd drew near the place, 
Awe in each eye, alarm in every face; 
So swift the ill, and of so fierce a kind. 
That fear with pity mingled in each mind ; 
Friends with the husl<and came their griefs to blend ; 
For good-man Frankford was to all a friend. 
The last-born boy they held above the bier. 
He knew not grief, but cries express'd his fear ; 
Each ditfcrent age and sex reveal'd its pain, 
In now a louder, now a lower strain ; 
While the meek fiither, listening to their tones, 
Swell'd the full cadence of the grief by groans. 

The elder sister strove her pangs to hide. 
And soothing words to younger minds applied : 
"Be' still, be patient," oft she strove to say ; 
But fail'd as oft, and weeping turn'd away. 

Curious and sad, upon the fresh-dug hill, 
The village lads stood melancholy still ; 
And idle children, wandering to and fro, 
As nature guided, took the tone of wo. 



THE DEATH OF RUTH.* 

She left her infant on the Sunday morn, 
A creature doom'd to shame ! in sorrow born. 
She came not home to share our humble meal, — 
Her father thinking what his child would feel 
From his hard sentence! — Siillshecamenot home, 
The night grew dark, and yet she was not come ! 
The east-wind roar'd. the sea return'd the sound, 
And the rain fell as if the world were drown'd : 
There were no lights without, and my good man, 
To kindness frighten'd, with a groan began 
To talk of Ruth, and pray ! and then he took 
The Bible down, and read the holy book : 

* Ruth is betrothed — something more than betrothed — 
to a young sailor, who, on the eve of marriage, is carried 
relentlessly off by a press-gang, and afterward slain in 
battle. A ranting, hypocritical weaver afterward becomes 
a snitor of the widowed bride, and her father urges her 
with severity to wed the missioned suiter. The above 
extract is from the conclusion of the story, in the " Tales 
of the Hall." Tlie heroine has promised to give her 
answer on Sunday. 



For he had learning : and when that was done, 
We sat in silence — whither could we run 1 
We said — and then rush'd frighten'd from the door, 
For we could bear our own conceit no more : 
We call'd on neighbours — there she had not been ; 
We met some wanderers — ours they had not seen : 
We hurried o'er the beach, both north and south, 
Then join'd, and wander'd to our haven's mouth: 
Where ruiih'd the falling waters v^'ildly out, 
I scarcely heard the good man's fearful shout. 
Who saw a something on the billaw ride. 
And — Heaven have mercy on our sins ! he cried. 
It is my child ! — and to the present hour 
So he believes — and spirits have the power ! 

And she was gone! the waters wide and deep 
RoH'd o'er her body as she lay asleep ! 
She heard no more the angry vi'aves and wind. 
She heard no more the threatening of mankind ; 
Wrapt in dark weeds, the refuse of the storm, 
To the hard rock was borne her comely form ! 

But oh! V. hat storm was in that mind ! what strife, 
That could compel her to lay down her life ! 
For she was seen within the sea to wade. 
By one at distance, when she first had pvay'd; 
Then to a rock within the hither shoal. 
Softly, and with a fearful step, she stole ; 
Then, when she gain'd it, on the top she stood 
A moment still — and dr^nt into the flood ! 
The man cried loudly, but he cried in vain, — 
She heard not then — she never heard again ! 



A GROUP OF GIPSIES. 

A WIDE 

And sandy road has banks on cither side ; 
Where, lo ! a hollow on the left appear'd, 
And there a gipsy tribe their tent had rear'd ; 
'Twas open spread, to catch the morning sun, 
And they had now their early meal begun. 
When two brown boys just left their grassy seat. 
The early traveller with their prayers to greet: 
While yet Orlando held his pence in hand. 
He saw their sister on her duty stand ; 
Some twelve years old, demure, afl'ectcd, sly. 
Prepared the force of early powers to try : 
Sudden a look of languor he descries. 
And wcll-feign'd apprehension in her eyes ; 
Train'd, but yet savage, in her speaking face, 
He mark'd the features of her vagrant race ; 
When a light laugh and roguish leer express'd 
The vice implanted in her youthful brea.^t ! 
Within, the father, who from fences nigh 
Had brought the fuel for the fire's supply, [by : 
Watch'd now the feeble blaze, and stood dejected 
On ragged rug, just borrow'd from the bed, 
And by the hand of coarse indulgence fed. 
In dirty patchwork negligently dress'd. 
Reclined the wife, an infant at her breast ; 
In her wild face some touch of grace remain'd. 
Of vigotir palsied and of beauty stain'd ; 
Her blood-shot eyes on her unheeding mate 
Were wrathful turn'd, and seem'd her wants to 
state. 



GEORGE CRABBE. 



21 



Cursing his tardy aid — her mother there 
With gipsy-state engross'd the only chair; 
Solemn aii<l dull her look : with such she stands, 
And reads tlie milk-maid's fortune, in her hands 
Tracing the lines of life ; assumed through years, 
Each feature now the steady falsehood wears ; 
With hard and savage eye she views the food, 
And grudging jjinches their intruding brood ! 
Last in the group, the worn-out graiulsire sits. 
Neglected, lost, and living but by fits ; 
Useless, despised, his worthless labours done, 
And half-protected by the vicious son. 
Who half-supports him ! He, with heavy glance. 
Views the young ruffians who around liim dance ; 
And, by the sadness in his face, appears 
To trace the progress of their future years; [ceit, 
Through what strange course of misery, vice, de- 
Must wildly wander each unpractised cheat ; 
What shame and grief, what punishment and pain. 
Sport of fierce passions, must each child sustain — 
Ere they like him approach their latter end, 
Without a hope, a comfort, or a friend I 



THE POOR-HOUSE. 

Your plan I love not: — with a number you 
Have placed your poor, your pitiable few ; 
There, in one house, for all their lives to be, 
The pauper-palace which they hate to see ! 
That giant building, tliat high bounding wall. 
Those bare-worn walks, that lofty thundering hall ! 
That large, loud clock, which tolls each dreaded 

hoar. 
Those gates and locks, and all those signs of power: 
It is a prison with a milder name, 
Which few inhabit without dread or shame. — 

Alas! their sorrows in their bosoms dwell ; 
They've much to suffer, but have naught to tell: 
They have no evil in the place to state, 
And dare not sa}^ it is the house they hate : 
They own there's granted all such place can give, 
But live repining, — for 'tis there they live ! 

Grandsires are there, who now no more must see, 
No more must nurse upon the trembling knee. 
The lost, loved daughter's infant progeny ! 
Like death's dread mansion, this allows not place 
For joyful meetings of a kindred race. 

Is not the matron tlierc, to whom the son 
Was wont at ear'h declining day to run ; 
He (when his toil was over) gave delight, 
By lifting up the latch, and one " Good night ?" 
Yes she is here; but nightly to her door 
The son, still labouring, can return no more. 

Widows are here, who in their huts were left, 
Of husbands, children, y)lenty, ease, bereft; 
Yet all that grief within the humble shed 
"Whs softcn'd, soften'd in the humble bed : 
But here, in all its force, remains the grief, 
And not one softening object for relief. 

Who can, when here, the social neighbour meet'! 
Who learn the story current in the street? 
Who to tiio lonff-known intimate impart 
Facts they have learn'd, or feelings of the heart? — 



They talk, indeed ; but who can choose a friend, 
Or seek comjianions, at their journey's end 1 — 

What if no grievous fears their lives annoy, 
Is it not worse, no prospects to enjoy ? 
'Tis cheerless living in such bounded view. 
With nothing dreadful, but with nothing new; 
Nothing to bring them joy, to make them weep — 
The day itself is, like the night, asleep: 
Or on the sameness if a break be made, 
'Tis by some pauper to his grave convey'd; 
By sniugglcil news from neighbouring village told, 
News never true, or truth a twelvemonth old ! 
By some new inmate doom'd with them to dwell, 
Or justice come to see that all goes well ; 
Or change of room, or hour of leave to crawl 
On the black footway winding with the wall. 
Till the stern Iiell forbids, or master's sterner call. 

Here the good pauper, losing all the praise 
By worthy deeds acquired in better days. 
Breathes a few months; then, to his chamber led, 
Expires — while strangers prattle round his bed. 



NEWSPAPERS. 

Now be their arts display 'd, how first they choose 
A cause and party, as the bard his muse ; 
Inspired by these, with clamorous zeal they cry. 
And through the town their drean\s and omens fly : 
So the sibylline leaves were blown about. 
Disjointed scraps of fate involved in doubt; 
So idle dreams, the journals of the night. 
Are right and wrong by turns, and mingle wrong 

with right. 
Some, champions for the rights that prop the crown. 
Some, sturdy patriots, sworn to pull them down ; 
Some, neutral powers, with secret forces fraught. 
Wishing for war, but willing to be bought: 
While some to every side and party go, 
Shift every friend, and join with every foe; 
Like sturdy rogues in privateers, they strike 
This side and that, the foes of both alike ; 
A traitor-crew, who thrive in troubled times, 
Fear'd for their force, and courted for their crimes. 

Chief to the prosperous side the numbers sail, 
Fickle and false, they veer with every gale ; 
As birds that migrate from a freezing shore. 
In search of warmer dimes, come skinmiing o'er, 
Some bold adventurers first prepare to try 
The doubtful sunshine of the distant sky ; 
But soon the growing summer's certain sun 
W ins more and more, till all at last are won : 
So, on the early prospect of disgrace, 
Fly in vast troops this apprehensive race ; 
Instinctive tribes ! their failing food they dread. 
And buy, with timely change, their future bread. 

Such are our guides : how many a peaceful head, 
Born to be still, have they to wrangling led ! 
How many an honest zealot stolen from trade, 
And factious tools of {)ious pastors made ! 
With clews like these they tread the maze of state, 
These oracles explore, to learn our fate ; 
Pleased with the guides who can so well deceive, 
Who cannot lie so fast as they believe. 



WILLIAM SO THE BY. 



Mr. Sotheby was bom in London in the 
autumn of 1757. He was educated at Har- 
row, and on entering his eigliteenth year he 
followed the example of his father, a colonel 
in the Guards, by purchasing- a commission 
in the Tenth Dragoons. In 1780 he quitted 
the army, and bought a beautiful seat near 
Southampton, where for a considerable period 
he devoted his time to the study of the classics 
and the cultivation of poetry. On removing 
to London in 1798 he was elected a member 
of the Royal Society, and soon after published 
his translation of Wieland's Oberon. In 181G 
he visited the Continent, and while abroad 



I wrote the series of poems subsequently pub- 
lished under the general title of Italy, which 
is the best of his numerous productions. The 
last of his works was a translation of Homer, 
commenced after he had entered upon his 
seventieth year. He died in London on the 
thirtieth of December, 1833. 

Mr. Sotheby was a man of rare scholar- 
ship, deeply imbued with the spirit of classi- 
cal literature, an^ his numerous writings, 
consisting of translations from the Greek, 
Latin, and German, and original English 
poems, ill deserve the neglect to which they 
have recently been consigned. 



ROME. 

I SAW the ages backward roll'j, 
The scenes long past restore : 
Scenes that Evander bade his guest behold, 
When first the Trojan stept on Tilier's shore — 
The shepherds in the forum pen their fold ; 
And the wild herdsman, on his untamed steed, 
Goads with prone spear the heifer's foaming speed, 
Where Rome, in second infancy, once more 
Sleeps in her cradle. But — in that drear waste, 
In that rude deseit, when the wild goat sprung 
From cliff to cliff, and the Tarpeian rock 
Lour'd o'er the untended flock. 
And eagles on its crest their agrie hung: 
And when fierce gales bow'd the high pines, when 

blazed 
The lightning, and the savage in the storm 
Some unknown godhead heard, and awe-struck, 

gazed 
On Jove's imagined form : — 
And in that desert, when swoln Tiber's wave 
Went forth the twins to save, 
Their reedy cradle floating on his flood : 
While yet the infants on the she-wolf clung, 
While yet they fearless play'd her brow beneath, 
And mingled with their food 
The spirit of her blood. 
As o'er them seen to breathe 
With fond reverted neck she hung. 
And lick'd in turn each babe, and form'd with fos- 
tering tongue : 
And when the founder of imperial Rome 
Fix'd on the robber hill, from earth aloof, 
His predatory home. 

And hung in triumph round his straw-thatch'd roof 
The wolf skin, and liuge boar tusks, and the pride 
Of branching antlers wide : 
And tower'd in giant strength, and sent afar 
His voice, that on the mountain echoes roll'd, 
Stern preluding the war; 
22 



And when the shepherds left their peaceful fold, 
And from the wild wood lair, and rocky den, 
Round their bold chieftain rush'd strange forms of 

barbarous men : 
Then might be seen by the presageful eye 
The vision of a rising realm unfold, 
And temples roof'd with gold. 
And in the gloom of that remorseless time, 
When Rome the Sabine seized, might be foreseen 
In the first triumph of successful crime, 
'i'he shadowy arm of one of giant birth 
Forging a chain for earth : 

And though slow ages roll'd their course between, 
The form as of a Cssar, when he led 
His war-worn legions on, 

Troubling the pastoral stream of peaceful Rubicon. 
Such might o'er clay-built Rome have been foretold 
By word of human wisdom. But — what word, 
Save from thy lip, Jehovah's prophet ! heard. 
When Rome was marble, and her temples gold, 
And the globe Csesar's footstool, who, when Rome 
View'd the incommunicable name divine 
Link a Faustina to an Antonine 
On their polluted temple ; who but thou, 
The prophet of the Lord ! what word, save thine, 
Rome's utter desolation had denounced ? 
Yet, ere that destined time. 
The love-lute, and the viol, song, and mirth, 
Ring from her palace roofs. Hear'st thou not yet, 
Metropolis of earth \ 

A voice borne back on every passing wind, 
Wherever man has birth, 
One voice, as from the lip of human kind. 
The echo of thy fame? — Flow they jiot yet, 
As flovv'd of yore, dowm each successive ago 
The chosen of the world, on pilgrimage, 
To commune wit'n thy wrecks, and works sublime, 

Where genius dwells enthroned ? 

Rome ! thou art doom'd to perish, and thy days, 
liike iiiorta! man's, are numbcr'd: number'd all. 
Ere each fleet hour decays. 



WILLIAM SOTHEBY. 



23 



Though pride yet haunt thy palaces, though art 
Thy sculptured marbles animate; [gate; 

Though thousands and ten thousands throng thy 
Though kings and kingdoms with thy idol mart 
Yet traffic, and thy throned priest adore : 
Tliy second reigu shall pass, — pass like thy reign 
of yore. 



TIVOLI. 

Spihit! who lovest to live unseen, 

By brook or patliless dell. 
Where wild woods burst the rocks between, 
And floods, in streams of silver sheen, 

Gush from their flinty cell ! 

Or where the ivy waves her woof. 

And climbs the crag alone, 
Haunts the cool grotto, daylight proof, 
Where loitering drops that wear the roof 

Turn all beneath to stone. 

Shield me from summer's blaze of day, 

From noon-tide's fiery gale. 
And, as thy waters round me play. 
Beneath the o'ershadowing cavern lay, 

Till twilight spreads her veil. 

Then guide me where the wandering moon 

Rests on Maecenas' wall, 
And echoes at night's solemn noon 
In Tivoli's soft shades attune 

The peaceful waterfall. 

Again they float before my sight 

The bower, the flood, the glade ; 
Again on yon romantic height 
The Sybil's temple towers in light, 
Above the dark cascade. 

Down the steep cliff I wind my way 

Along the dim retreat. 
And, 'mid the torrents' deafening bray 
Dash from my brow the foam away, 

Where clashing cataracts meet. 

And now I leave the rocks below, 

And issuing forth from night, 
Vievir on the flakes that sunward flow, 
A thousand rainbows round me glow, 

And arch my way with light- 
Again the myrtles o'er me breathe, 

Fresh flowers my path perfume, 
Round clifl'and cave wild tendrils wreathe, 
And from the groves that bend beneath 

Low trail their purple bloom. 

Thou grove, thou ctlade of Tivoli, 

Dark flood, am! rivulet clear. 
That wind, where'er you wander by, 
A stream of beauty on the eye, 

Of music on the ear : — 

And thou, that, when the wandering moon 

Illumed the rocky dell. 
Didst to my charmed ear attune 
The echoes of night's solemn noon — 

Spirit unseen ! farewell ! 



Farewell ! — o'er many a realm I go, 

My natal isle to greet. 
Where sunmier sunbeams mildly glow, 
And sea-winds health and freshness blow 

O'er freedom's hallow'd seat. 

Yet there, to thy romantic spot 

Shall fancy oft retire. 
And hail the bower, the stream, the grot, 
Where earth's sole lord the world forgot, 

And Horace smote the lyre. 



THE GROTTO OF EGERIA. 

Can I forget that beauteous day, 

When, sheltcr'd from the burning beam. 

First in thy haunted grot I lay, 
And loosed my spirit to its dream. 

Beneath the broken arch, o'erlaid 

With ivy, dark with many a braid, 

That clasp'd its tendrils to retain 

The stone its roots had writhed in twain 1 

No zephyr on the leaflet play'd, 

No bent grass bow'd its slender blade. 

The coiled snake lay slumber-bound ; 

All mute, all motionless around. 

Save, livelier, while others slept, 

The lizard on the sunbeam leapt; 

And louder, while the groves were still. 

The unseen cigali, sharp and shrill, 

As if their chirp could charm alone 

Tired noontide with its unison. 

Stranger ! that roam'st in solitude ! 
Thou, too, 'mid tangling bushes rude. 
Seek in the glen, yon heights between, 
A rill more pure than Hippocrene, 
That from a sacred fountain fed 
The stream that fill'd its marble bed. 
Its marble bed long since is gone. 
And the stray water struggles on. 
Brawling through weeds and stones its way 
There, when o'erpower'd at blaze of day. 
Nature languishes in light. 
Pass within the gloom of night. 
Where the cool grot's dark arch o'ershades 
Thy temples, and the waving braids 
Of many a fragment brier that weaves 
Its blossom through the ivy leaves. 
Thou, too, beneath that rocky roof. 
Where the moss mats its thickest woof, 
Shalt hear the gather'd ice-drops fall 
Regular, at interval. 
Drop after drop, one after one, 
Making music on the stone. 
While every drop, in slow decay, 
Wears the recumbent nymph away. 
Thou, too, if e'er thy youthful ear 
Thrilfd the Latian fay to hear, 
I/uU'd to slumber in that cave, 
Shalt hail the nymph that held the wave; 
A goddess, who there deigned to meet 
A mortal from Rome's re^al seat, 
And, o'er the gn-hing of her fount. 
Mysterious truths divine to earthly ear recount. 



WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES. 



William Lisle Bowles was born at King's 
Sutton in Northampshire, a village of which 
his father was vicar, in September, 17G2. He 
took his degree of Master of Arts in 1792 at 
Trinity College, Oxford, where he obtained 
the chancellor's prize for a Latin poem on the 
Siege of Gibraltar. He soon after entered into 
holy orders, and was appointed to a curacy in 
Wiltshire, from which he was promoted to 
the living of Dumbledon in Gloucestershire, 
and finally, in 1803, to a prebend in Salisbury 
Cathedral. We believe he is still living on 
the rectory of Bremhill, Wilts, where for many 
years he performed the duties of his office 
with industrious zeal, and was much loved 
and respected for his piety, amenity, and 
genius. 

The first publication of Mr. Bowles, was a 
collection of Sonnets, printed in 1789. They 
were well received, and Coleridge speaks of 
himself as having been withdrawn from peril- 
ous errors by the " genial influence of a style 
of poetry so tender and yet so manly, so 
natural and real, and yet so dignified and 



harmonious," whose sadness always soothed 

him — 

"like the niurmiiriiig 

Of wild bees in the sunny showers of Spring." 

He subsequently published "Verses to 
John Tloward on his State of the Prisons and 
Lazarettos," " Hope," " Coombe Ellen," " St. 
Michael's Mount," "A Collection of Poems" 
in four volumes, " The Batile of the Nile," 
"The Sorrows of Switzerland," "The Mis- 
sionary," "The Grave of the Last Saxon," 
"The Spirit of Discovery by Sea," (the 
longest and best of his works,) " The Little 
Villager's Verse Book," and " Scenes and 
Shadows of Days Departed," which appeared 
in 1837. He was at one time better known 
as a critic than as a poet, from his cele- 
brated controversy with Byron, and others, 
on the writings of Pope and the " invariable 
principles" of poetry. 

The sonnets of Mr. Bowles are doubtless 
superior to his other productions, but even they 
were never generally popular. He is always 
elegant and chaste, and sometimes tender, but 
has little imagination or earnestness. 



DISCOVERY OF MADEIRA. 

She left 
The Severn's side, and fled with him she loved 
O'er the wide main ; for he had told her tales 
Of happiness in distant lands, where care 
Comes not, and pointing to the golden clouds 
That shone above the waves, when evening came, 
Whisper'd, "Oh! are there not sweet scenes of peace, 
Far from the murmurs of this cloudy mart. 
Where gold alone bears sway, scenes of delight, 
Where Love may lay his head upon the lap 
Of Innocence, and smile at all the toil 
Of the low-thoughted throng, that place in wealth 
Their only bliss ? Yes, there are scenes like these. 
Leave the vain chidings of the world behind. 
Country, and hollow friends, and fly with me 
Where love and peace in distant vales invite. 
What wouldst thou here 1 Oh shall thy beauteous 

look 
Of maiden innocence, thy smile of youth, thine eyes 
Of tenderness and soft subdued desire, 
Thy form, thy limbs — oh, madness ! — be the prey 
Of a decrepit spoiler, and for gold? — 
24 



Perish his treasure with him ! Haste with me, 
W^e shall find out some sylvan nook, and then 
If thou shouldst sometimes think upon these hills, 
When they are distant far, and drop a tear, 
Yes — I will kiss it from thy cheek, and clasp 
Thy angel beauties closer to niy breast ; 
And while the winds blow o'er us, and the sun 
Goes beautifully down, and thy soft cheek 
Reclines on mine, I will enfold thee thus, 
And proudly cry. My friend — my love — my wife !" 

So tempted he, and soon her heart approved, 
Nay woo'd, the blissful dream ; and oft at eve, 
When the moon shone upon the wandering stream, 
She paced the castle's battlements, that threw 
Beneath their solemn shadow, and resign'd 
To fancy and to tears, tboi;a;ht it most sweet 
To wander o'er the world with him she loved. 
Nor was his birth ignoble, for he shone 
Mid England's gallant youth in Edward's reign — 
Witli countenance erec^, and honest eye 
Commanding, (yet suffused in tenderness 
At times,) and smiles that like the lightning play'd 
On his brown cheek, — so nobly stern he stood, — 
Accomplish'd, generous, gentle, brave, sincere, 



WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES. 



25 



Robert a Machin. But the sullen pride 
Of haughty D'Arfel scorn'd all other claim 
To his high heritage, save what the pomp 
Of amplest wealth and loftier lineage gave. 
Reckless of human tenderness, that seeks 
One loved, one honour'd object, wealth alone 
He worshipp'd ; and for this he could consign 
His only child, his aged hope, to loathed 
Embraces, and a life of tears ! Nor here 
His hard ambition ended : for he sought 
By secret whispers of conspiracies 
His sovereign to abuse, bidding him lift 
His arm avenging, and upon a youth 
Of promise close the dark forgotten gates 
Of living sepulture, and in the gloom 
Inhume the slowly-wasting victim. — 

So 
He purposed, but in vain : the ardent youth 
Rescued her — her whom more than life he loved, 
E'en when the horrid day of sacrifice 
Drew nigh. He pointed to the distant bark, 
And while he kiss'd a stealing tear that fell 
On her pale cheek, as trusting she reclined 
Her head upon his breast, with ardour cried, 
" Be mine, be only mine ; the hour invites ; 
Be mine, be only mine." So won, she cast 
A look of last affection on the towers 
Where she had pass'd her infant days, that now 
Shone to the setting sun — " I follow thee," 
Her faint voice said ; and 16 ! where in the air 
A sail hangs tremulous, and soon her steps 
Ascend the vessel's side : The vessel glides 
Down the smooth current, as the twilight fades, 
Till soon the woods of Severn, and the spot 
Where D'Arfet's solitary turrets rose. 
Are lost — a tear starts to her eye — she thinks 
Of him whose gray head to the earth shall bend. 
When he speaks nothing:. — but be all, like death, 
Forgotten. Gently blows the placid breeze, 
And oh ! that now some fairy pinnance light 
Might flit along the wave, (by no seen power 
Directed, save when Love, a blooming boy, 
Gather'd or spread with tender hand the sail,) 
That now some fairy pinnance, o'er the surge 
Silent, as in a summer's dream, might waft 
The passengers upon the conscious flood 
To scenes of undisturbed joy. 

But hark ! 
The wind is in the shrouds — the cordage sings 
With fitful violence — the blast now swells, 
Now sinks. Dread gloom invests the farther wave. 
Whose foaming toss alone is seen, beneath 
Tlie veering bowsprit. 

retire to rest, [cheek 

Maiden, whose tender heart would beat, whose 
Turn pale to see another thus exposed : — 
Hark ! the deep thunder louder peals — Oh save — 
The high mast crashes ; but the faithful arm 
Of love is o'er thee, and thy anxious eve. 
Soon as the gray of m irning peeps, shall view 
Green Erin's hills aspiring ! 

The sad morn 
Comes forth : but Terror on the sunless wave 
Still, like a sei-fiend, sits, and darkly smiles 
Beneath the flash that through the struggling clouds 
4 



Bursts frequent, half-revealing his scathed front, 
Above the rocking of the waste that rolls 
Boundless around : — 

No word through the long day- 
She spoke: — Another slowly came:— No word 
The beauteous drooping mourner spoke. The sun 
Twelve times had sunk beneath the sullen surge, 
And cheerless rose again : — Ah, where are now 
Thy havens, France 1 But yet — resign not yet — 
Ye lost sea-farers — oh, resign not yet 
All hope — the storm is pass'd ; the drencheil s;iil 
Shines in the passing beam ! Look up. and sav, 
" Heaven, thou hast heard our prayers I" 

And lo ! scarce seen, 
A distant dusky spot appears; — they reach 
An unknown shore, and green and flowery vales, 
And azure hills, and silver-gushing streams, 
Shine forth, a Paradise, which Heaven alone, 
Who saw the silent anguish of despair. 
Could raise in the waste wilderness of waves. — 
They gain the haven — through untrodden scenes, 
Perhaps untrodden by the foot of man 
Since first the earth arose, they wind : The voice 
Of Nature hails them here with music, sweet, 
As waving woods retired, or falling streams, 
Can make ; most soothing to the weary heart, 
Doubly to those who, struggling with their fate, 
And wearied long with watchings and with grief, 
Sought but a place of safety. All things here 
Whisper repose and peace ; the very birds. 
That mid the golden fruitage glance their plumes, 
The songsters of the lonely valley, sing 
" Welcoine from scenes of sorrow, live with us." — 

The wild wood opens, and a shady glen 
Appears, embower'd with mantling laurels high, 
That sloping shade the flowery valley's side ; 
A lucid stream, with gentle murmur, strays 
Beneath the umbrageous multitude of leaves. 
Till gaining, with soft lapse, the nether plain, 
It glances light along its yellow bed. 
The shaggy inmates of the forest lick 
The feet of their new guests, and gazing stand. — 
A beauteous tree upshoots amid the glade 
Its trembling top; and there upon the bank 
They rest them, while the heart o'erflows with joy. 

Now evening, breathing richer odours sweet, 
Came down : a softer sound the circling seas, 
The ancient woods resounded, while the dove, 
Her murmurs interposing, tenderness 
Awaked, yet more endearing, in the hearts 
Of those who, sever'd far from human kind. 
Woman and man, by vows sincere betrothed. 
Heard but the voice of Nature. The still moon 
Arose — they saw it not — check was to cheek 
Inclined, and unawares a stealing tear 
Witness'd how blissful was that hotir, thatscem'd 
Not of the hours that time could count. A kiss 
Stole on the listening silence ; never vet 
Here heard : they trembled, e'en as if the Power 
That made the world, that planted the first pair 
In Paradise, amid the garden walk'd, — 
This since the fairest garden that the world 
Has witness'd, by the fabling sons of Greece 
Hesperian named, who feigii'd the watchful guard 
Of the scaled Dragon, and the Golden Fruit. 
C 



Such was this syl'^'an Paradise ; and here 
The loveliest pair, from a hard world remote, 
Upon each other's neck reclined ; their breath 
Alone was heard, when the dove ceased on high 
Her plaint ; and tenderly their faithful arms 
Enfolded each the other. 

Thou, dim cloud. 
That from the search of men, t'le.ne beauteous vales 
Hast closed, oh doubly veil thom ! But, alas, 
How short the dream of human transport ! Here, 
In vaiti they built the leafy bower of love. 
Or cull'd the sweetest flowers and fairest fruit. 
The hours unheeded stole ; but ah ! not long — 
Again the hollow tempest of the night [sound; 
Sounds througli the leaves; the inmost woods re- 
Slow comes the dawn, but neither ship nor sail 
Along the rocking of the windy waste 
Is seen : the dash of the dark-heaving wave 
Alone is heard. Start from your bed of bliss, 
Poor victims ! never more shall ye behold 
iTour native vales again ; and tliou, sweet child ! 
Who, listening to the voice of love, has left 
Thy friends, thy country, — oh may the wan hue 
Of pining memory, th^ sunk cheek, the eye 
Where tenderness yet dwells, atone, (if love 
Atonement need, by cruelty and wrong 
Beset,) atone e'en now thy rash resolves. 
Ah, fruitless hope ! Day after day thy bloom 
Fades, and the tender lustre of thy eye 
Is dimm'd; thy form, amid creation, seems 
The only drooping thing. 

Thy look was soft. 
And yet most animated, and thy step 
Light as the roe's upon the mountains. Now, 
Thou sittest hopeless, pale, beneath the tree 
That fann'd its joyous leaves above thy head. 
Where love had deck'd the blooming bower, and 

strew'd 
The sweets of summer : Death is on thy cheek. 
And thy chill hand the pressure scarce returns 
Of him, who, agonized and hopeless, hangs 
With tears and trembling o'er thee. Spare the 

sight,— 
She faints — she dies ! — 

He laid her in the earth, 
Himself scarce living, and upon her tomb, 
Beneath the beauteous tree where they reclined. 
Placed the last tribute of his earthly love. . . . 

He.placed the rude inscription on her stone, 
Which he with faltering hands had graved, and soon 
Himself beside it sunk — yet ere he died, 
Faintly he spoke; " If ever ye shall hear, 
Companions of my few and evil days, 
Again the convent's vesper bells, O think 
Of me ! and if in after-times the search 
Of men should reach this far-removed spot. 
Let sad remembrance raise an humble shrine. 
And virgin choirs chant duly o'er our grave — 
Peace, peace." His arm upon the mournful stone 
He dropp'd — his eyes, ere yet in death they closed, 
Turn'd to the name till he could see no more — 
" AxxA." His pale survivors, earth to earlh. 
Weeping consign'd his poor remains, and placed 
Beneath the sod where all he loved was laid : — 
Then shaping a rude vessel from the woods, 



They sought their country o'er the waves, and left 
The scenes again to deepest solitude. 
The beauteous Ponciana hung its head 
O'er the gray "stone ; but never human eye 
Had mark'd the spot, or gazed upon the grave 
Of the unfortunate, but for the voice 
Of Enterprise, that spoke, from Sagre's tower, 
" Through ocean's perils, storms, and unknown 

wastes. 
Speed we to Asia i" 



DREAMS OF YOUTPL 

BKnF.AVE me not of these delightful dreams 

Which charni'd my youth ; or mid her gay career 
Of hope, or when the faintly-paining tear 

Sat sad on memory's cheek ! though loftier themes 
Await the awaken'd mind, to the high prize 

Of wisdom hardly earn'd with toil and pain. 

Aspiring patient; yet on life's wide plain 

Cast friendless, where unheard some sufferer cries 

Hourly, and oft our road is lone and long, 
'T were not a crime, should we awhile delay 
Amid the sunny field ; and happier they. 

Who, as they wander, woo the charm of song 

To cheer their path, till they forget to weep ; 

And the tired sense is hush'd and sinks to sleep. 



TO TIME. 

Time, who know'st a lenient hand to lay 
Softest on sorrow's wounds, and slowly thence 
(Lulling to sad repose the weary sense) 

The faint pang stealest unperceived away : 
On thee I rest my only hopes at last ; 

And think when thou hast dried the bitter tear, 
That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear, 

1 may look back on many a sorrow past. 
And greet life's peaceful evening with a smile. 

As some lone bird, at day's departing hour. 
Sings in the sunshine of the transient shower, 
Forgetful, though its wings be wet the while. 
But ah ! what ills must t'nat poor heart endure. 
Who hopes from thee, and thee alone a cure. 



RETROSPECTION. 

As slow I climb the cliff's ascending side. 
Much musing on the track of terror past, 
When o'er the dark wave rode the hoveling blast, 
Pleased I look back, and view the tranquil tide 
That laves the pebbled shores ; and now the beam 
Of evening smiles on the gray battlement, 
And yon forsaken tower that time has rent: 
The lifted oar far off with silver gleam 
Is touch'd. and the hush'd billows seem to sleep. 
Sooth'd by the scene e'en thus on sorrow's breast 
A kindred stillness steals, and bids her rest; 
Whilst s.id airs stilly sigh along the deep, 
Like melodies that mourn upon the lyre 
Waked by the breeze, and as they mourn, expire. 



WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES. 



37 



FUNERAL OF CHARLES THE FIRST,* 

AT NIGHT, IN ST. GEOr.OiE's CHATEL, WINDSOR. 

Thf. castle clock h;td toll'd midnight — 

With mattock and with spade, 
And silent, by the torches' light, 

His corse in earth we laid. 

The coffin bore his name, that those 

Of other years might know. 
When earth its secret sliould disclose, 

Whose bones were laid below. 

<' Peace to the dead" no children sung. 

Slow pacing up the mive ; 
No prayers were read, no knell was rung. 

As deep we dug his grave. 

We only heard the winter's wind, 

In many a sullen gust. 
As o'er the open grave inclined, 

We murmur'd, " Dust to dust !" 

A moonbeam, from the arches' height, 
Stream'd, as we placed the stone ; 

The long aisles started into light. 
And all the windows shone. 

We thought we saw the banners then, 

That shook along the walls. 
While the sad shades of mailed men, 

Were gazing from the stalls. 

'T is gone ! again, on tombs defaced, 

Sits darkness more profound. 
And only, by the torch, we traced 

Our shadows on the ground. 

And now the chilly, freezing air. 

Without, blew long and loud ; 
Upon our knees we breathed one prayer 

Where he — slept in his shroud. 

We laid the broken marble floor — 

No name, no trace appears — 
And when we closeil the sounding door 

We thought of him with tears. 



REMEMBRANCE. 

I SHALL look back, when on the main, — 

Back to my native isle. 
And almost think I hear again 

Thy voice, and view thy smile. 

But many days may pass away 

Ete I again shall see 
Amid the young, the fair, the gay, — 

One who resembles thee. 

* III the account of the Imrial of ttie king in Windsor 
Castle by Sir Tlinniiis Herbert, the spot where the boiiy 
was laid is described niinulply, opposite the eleventh 
stall. The whole arconnt is singiil.irly impressive ; but 
it is extraojjiinary it should f ver hnve been supposed that 
the place of interment was unknown, when this descrip- 
tion existed. At the late accidental disinterment, some 
of his hair was cut otf. Sooa after, the followini; lines 
were wiitten, which I now set before the reader for the 
first time. 



Yet v^'hen the pensive thought shall dwell 

On some ideal maid, 
Whom fancy's pencil pictured well, 

And touch'd with softest shade: 

The imaged form I shall survey, 

And, pausing at t!ie view, 
Recall thy gentle smile, atid say, 

" Oh, such a maid I knew !" 



ON THE RHINE. 

'T WAS morn, and beauteous on the mountain's brow 
(Hung with the blushes of the bending vine,) 
Stream'd the blue light, when on the sparkling 
Rhine 
We bounded, and the white waves round the prow 
In murmurs parted ; varying as we go, 

Lo ! the woods open and the rocks retire ; 
Some convent's ancient walls, or glistening spire 
Mid the bright landscape's tract, unfolding slow. 

Here dark with furrow'd aspect, like despair. 
Hangs the bleak clilf, there on the woodland's side 
The shadowy sunshine pours its streaming tide; 
Whilst Hope, enchanted with a scene so fair, 
Would wish to linger many a summer's day. 
Nor heeds how fast the prospect winds away. 



WRITTEN AT OSTEND. 

How sweet the tuneful bells responsive peal ! 
As when, at opening morn, the fragrant breeze 
Breathes on the trembling sense of wan disease, 
So piercing to my heart their force I feel I 
And hark ! with lessening cadence now they fall, 
And now along the vs'hite and level tide 
They fling their melancholy music wide, 
Bidding me many a tender thought recall 

Of summer days, and those delightful years, 
When by my native streams, in life's fair prime. 
The mournful magic of their mingling chime 

First waked my wondering childhood into tears ; 
But seeming now, when all those days are o'er. 
The sounds of joy, once heard and heard no more. 



MATILDA. 

If chance some pensive stranger hither led. 
His bosom glowing from romantic views, 
The gorgeous palace or proud landscape's hues, 
Should ask who sleeps beneath this lowly bed 1 
'T is poor Matilda ! — to the cloister'd scene 

A mourner beauteous, "and unknown she came 
To shed her secret tears, and quench the flame 
Of hopeless love ! yet was her look serene 

As the pale moonlight in the midnight aisle. 
Her voice was soft, which yet a charm could lend, 
Like that which spake of a departed friend: 
And a meek sadness sat upon her smile ! 
Ah, be the spot by passing pity blest, 
Where hush'd to long repose the wretched rest. 



SAMUEL ROGERS. 



Mr. Rogers was born in London in 1762. 
On the completion of his university education, 
he resided a considerable period on the conti- 
nent, but nearly all his life has been passed 
in his native city. He is a banker, and a 
man of liberal fortune; and among those who 
know him he is scarcely more distinguished 
as a poet than for the elegance and amenity 
of his manners, his knowledge of literature 
and the arts, and his brilliant conversation. 
In his youth he was the companion of Wynd- 
HAM, Fox, and Sheridan, and in later years 
he has enjoyed the friendship of Byron, 
Moore, Southey, Wordsworth, and nearly 
all the great authors and other eminent persons 
who have been his contemporaries in England. 

Mr. Rogers commenced his career as an 
author with an Ode to Superstition, which 
was written in his twenty-fifth year. This 
was succeeded, in 1792, by The Pleasures 
of Memory, which was received with extra- 
ordinary favour by the critics. It had been 
kept the Horatian period, and revised and re- 
written until it could receive no further ad- 
vantage from labour, guided by the nicest taste 
and judgment. In 1778 he published An 
Epistle to a Friend and other Poems, in 1812 
The Voyage of Columbus, in 1814 Jaqueline, 
in 1819 Human Life, and in 1822 the last, 
longest, and best of his productions, Italy. 

Lord Bacon describes poetry as " having 
something of divineness, because it doth raise 
and erect the mind, by submitting the sliows 
of things to the desires of the mind ; whereas 
reason doth buckle and bow the mind to the 
nature of things." This is perhaps the most 
philosophical description that has been given 
of true poetry. There have been some poets, 
as Crabbe and Elliott, whose verse has re- 
flected actual life ; but they only who have 
conformed " the shows of things to the desires 
of the mind," can look with much confidence 
for immortality. It is a long time since Rogers 
made his first appearance before the world as 
an author, yet his reputation has probably 
suffered less decay than that of any of his 
contemporaries. This is not because he pos- 
sesses the higher qualities of the ])oet in a 

28 



more eminent degree than they, but because 
he is more than any other the poet of taste, 
and is guided by the sense of beauty rather 
than by the convictions of reason. Poetry is 
in some sort an art, though Vida was forced 
to admit the inefficiency of all rules if the 
ingenia were wanting. If a man be by nature 
a poet, he must still have much cultivation 
before he will be able to fulfil his mission. 
There has never yet been an " uneducated" 
verse-maker whose works were worth reading 
a second time. But mere education, or edu- 
cation joined with a philosophic mind and 
some degree of taste, cannot make a great 
poet, as one illustrious example in our times 
will show. Rogers has not nnich imagination, 
not much of the creative faculty, and he lacks 
sometimes energy and sometimes tenderness, 
yet he has taste and genuine simplicity : not 
the caricature of it for which the present lau- 
reate is distinguished, but such simplicity as 
Cowper had, and Burns. His subjects are 
all happily chosen ; and a true poet proves 
the possession of the divine faculty almost as 
much in the selection of his themes as in their 
treatment. His poetry is always pleasing; its 
freedom and harmony, its refined sentiment, its 
purity, charm us before we are aware, and we 
involuntarily place it among our treasures. 

Though less read than The Pleasures of 
Memory, Italy is the best poem Mr. Rogers 
has produced. It was published anonymous- 
ly, and was so different from his previous 
works that its authorship was an enigma to 
the critics. Tlie several cantos are descrip- 
tive of particular scenes and events which in- 
terest a traveller over the Alps and through 
the northern parts of Italy. Some of these 
cantos are remarkably spirited and beautiful, 
as one may see by the extracts in this volume, 
entitled Venice, Ginevra, and Don Garzia. 

Within a few years Mr. Rogers has pub- 
lished in two volumes, illustrated in the most 
beautiful manner by some of the first artists 
of England, his Complete Poetical Works. 
He is now in the eighty-third year of his 
age, and the oldest of the living poets of his 
country. 



9AMUEL ROGERS. 



29 



AN EPISTLE TO A FRIEND. 

When, with a Reaumur's skill, thy curious mind 
Has cluss'il the insect tribes of human kind, 
Eai'h with its busy hum, or gilded winu-. 
Its subtle wcb-work, or its venom'd sting; 
Let me, to claim a few unvalued hours. 
Point the green lane that leads tliro' fern and flowers; 
The shelter'd gate that opens to my field, 
And the white front through mingling elms reveal'd. 

In vain, alas, a village friend invites 
To sim[)le comforts, and domestic rites, 
When the gay months of Carnival resume 
Their annual round of glitter and perfume ; 
When London hails thee to its splendid mart, 
Its hives of sweets, and cabinets of art ; 
And, lo ! majestic as thy manly song. 
Flows the full tide of human life along. 

Still must my partial pencil love to dwell 
On the home prospects of my hermit cell ; 
The mossy pales that skirt the orchard-green, 
Here hid by shrub-wood, there by glimpses seen ; 
And the brown pathway, that, with careless (low, 
Sinks, and is lost among the trees below. 
Still must it trace (the flattering tints forgive) 
Each fleeting charm that bids the landscape live. 
Oft o'er the iliead, at pleasing distance, pass — 
Browsing the hedge by fits, the pannier'd ass; 
The idling shepherd-boy, with rude delight, 
Whistling his dog to mark the pebble's flight; 
And in her kerchief blue the cottage-maid, 
With brimming pitcher from the shadowy glade. 
Far to the south a mountain vale retires, 
Rich in its groves, and glens, and village-spires ; 
Its upland lawns, and cliffs with foliage hung, 
Its wizard-stream, nor nameless nor unsung : 
And through the various year, the various day, 
What scenes of glory burst, and melt away ! 

When April verdure springsinGrosvenor-square, 
And the furr'd beauty comes to winter there, 
She bids old Nature mar the plan no more ; 
Yet still the seasons circle as before. 
Ah, still as soon the young Aurora plays, 
Tho' moons and flambeaux trail their broadest blaze ; 
As soon the skylark pours his matin song. 
Though evening lingers at the mask so long. 

There let her strike with momentary ray, 
As tapers shine their little lives away ; 
There let her practise from herself to steal, 
And look the happiness she does not feel ; 
The ready smile and bidden blush employ 
At Faro-routs, that dazzle to destroy ; 
Fan with affected ease the essenced air. 
And lisp of fashions with unmeaning stare. 
Be thine to meditate an humbler flight. 
When morning fills the fields with rosy light ; 
Be thine to blend, nor thine a vulgar aim, 
Repose with dignity, with quiet fame. 

Here no state-chambers in long line unfold. 
Bright with broad mirrors, rough with fretted gold ; 
Yet modest ornament, with use combined, 
Attracts the eye to exercise the mind. [quires, 

Small change of scene, small space his home re- 
Wlio leads a life of satisfied desires. 

What tho' no marble breathes, no canvas glows, 



From every point a ray of genius flows ! 
Be mine to bless the more mechanic skill, 
'J^hat stamps, renews, and multiplies at will ; 
And cheaply circulates, through distant climes, 
The fairest relics of the purest times. 
Here from the mould to conscious being start 
Those finer forms, the miracles of art; 
Here chosen gems, imprest on sulphur, shine, 
That slept for ages in a second mine ; 
And here the faithful graver dares to trace 
A Michael's grandeur, and a Raphael's grace ! 
Thy gallery, Florence, gilds my humble walls, 
And my low roof the Vatican recalls ! 
Soon as the morning dream my pillow flies, 
To waking sense what brighter visions rise ! 
Oh mark ! again the coursers of the sun, 
At Guido's call, their round of glory run ! 
Again the rosy Hours resume their flight, 
Oliscured and lost in floods of golden light ! 

But could thine erring friend so long forget 
(Sweet source of pensive joy and fond regret) 
That here its warmest hues the pencil flings, 
Lo ! here the lost restores, the absent brings ; 
And still the few best loved and most revered 
Rise round the board their social smile endear'd. 

Selected shelves shall claim thy studious hours ; 
There shall thy ranging mind be fed on flowers ! 
There, while the shaded lamp's mild lustre streams. 
Head ancient books, or dream inspiring dreams ; 
And, when a sage's bust arrests thee there. 
Pause, and his features with his thoughts compare. 
— Ah, most that art my grateful rapture calls, 
Which breathes a soul into the silent walls; 
Which gathers round the wise of every tongue. 
All on whose words departed nations hung; 
Still prompt to charm with many a converse sweet ; 
Guides in the world, companions in retreat ! 

Though my thatch'd bath no rich Mosaic knows, 
A limpid spring with unfelt current flows. 
Emblem of life ! which, still as we survey. 
Seems motionless, yet ever glides away ! 
The shadowy walls record, with attic art, 
The strength and beauty that its waves impart. 
Here Thetis, bending, with a mother's fears 
Dips her dear boy, whose pride restrains his tears. 
There, Venus, rising, shrinks with sweet surprise. 
As her fair self, reflected, seems to rise ! 

Far from the joyless glare, the maddening strife. 
And all " the dull impertinence of life," 
These eyelids open to the rising ray. 
And close, when Nature bids, at close of day. 
Here, at the dawn, the kindling landscape glows; 
There noonday levees call from faint repose. 
Here the flush'd wave flings back the parting light ; 
There glimmering lamps anticipate the night. 
When from his classic dreams the student steals. 
Amid the buzz of crowtls, the whirl of wheels. 
To muse unnoticed — while around him press 
The meteor-forms of equipai^e and dress; 
Alone, in wonder lost, he seems to stand 
A very stranger in his native land ! 
And (though perchance of current coin possest, 
And modern phrase by living lips exprest) 
Like those blest youths, forgive the fabling page. 
Whose blameless lives deceived a twilight age, 
c 2 



30 



SAMUEL ROGERS. 



Spent in sweet slumbers ; till the miner's spade 
Unclosed the cavern, and the morning play'd. 
Ah, what their strange surprise, their wild delight ! 
New arts of hfe, new manners meet their sight ! 
In a new world they wake, as from the dead ; 
Yet doubt the trance dissolved, the vision fled ! 

O come, and, rich in intellectual wealth, 
Blend thought with exercise, with knowledge health! 
Long, in this shelter'd scene of letter'd talk, 
With sober step repeat the pensive walk ; 
Nor scorn, when graver triflings fail to please, 
The cheap amusements of a mind at ease ; 
Here every care in sweet oblivion cast, 
And many an idle hour — not idly pass'd. 

No tuneful echoes, ambush'd at my gate, 
Catch the blest accents of the wise and great. 
Vain of its various page, no Album breathes 
The sigh that friendship or the muse bequeaths. 
Yet some good genii o'er my hearth preside, 
Oft the far friend, with secret spell, to guide ; 
And there I trace, when the gray evening lours, 
A silent chronicle of happier hours ! 

When Christmas revels in a world of snow, 
And bids her berries blush, her carols flow ; 
His spangling shower when frost the wizard flings; 
Or, borne in ether blue, on viewless wings, 
O'er the white pane his silvery foliage weaves, 
And gems with icicles the sheltering eaves ; 
— Thy muffled friend his nectarine-wall pvsues, 
What time the sun the yellow crocus wooes, 
Screen'd from the arrowy north ; and duly hies 
To meet the morning-rumour as it flies. 
To range the murmuring market-place, and view 
The motley groups that faithful Teniers drew. 

When spring bursts forth in blossoms through 
the vale. 
And her wild music triumphs on the gale, 
Oft with my book I muse from stile to stile ; 
Oft in my porch the listless noon beguile, 
Framing loose numbers, till declining day 
Through the green trellis shoots a crimson ray ; 
Till the west-wind leads on the twilight hours. 
And shakes the fragrant bells of closing flowers. 

Nor boast, Choisy ! seat of soft delight. 
The secret charm of thy voluptuous night. 
Vain is the blaze of wealth, the pomp of power ! 
Lo, here, attendant on the shadowy hour. 
Thy closet-supper, served by hands unseen, 
Sheds, like an evening-star, its ray serene. 
To hail our coming. Not a step profane 
Dares, with rude sound, the cheerful rite restrain ; 
And, while the frugal banquet glows reveal'd, 
Pure and unbought. — the natives of my field ; 
Whileblushing fruits through scatter'd leaves invite. 
Still clad in bloom, and veil'd in azure light; — 
With wine, as rich in years as Horace sings, 
With water, clear as his own fountain flings, 
The shifting sideboard plays its humbler part, 
Beyond the triumphs of a Loriot's art. 

Thus, in this calm recess, so richly fraught 
With mental light, and luxury of thought. 
My life steals on ; (Oh could it blend with thine !) 
Careless ray course, yet not without design. 
So through the vales of Loire the bee-hives glide, 
The light raft dropping with the silent tide ; 



So, till the laughing scenes are lost in night, 
1'he busy people wing thtir various flight. 
Culling unnumber'd sweets from nameless flowers, 
That scent the vineyard in iis purple hours. 

Rise, eie the watch-relieving clarions play, 
Caught through St. James's groves a blush of day ; 
Ere its full voice the choral anthem flings 
Through trophied tombs of heroes and of kings. 
Haste to the tranquil shade of learned ease, 
Though skill'd alike to dazzle and to please ; 
Though each gay scene be search'd with anxiouseye. 
Nor thy shut door be pass'^j without a sigh. 

If when this roof shall know thy friend no more. 
Some, form'd like thee, should once, like thee, 

explore ; 
Invoke the Lares of this loved retreat, 
And his lone walks imprint with pilgrim-feet; 
Then be it said, (as, vain of better days. 
Some gray domestic prompts the partial praise,) 
" Unknown he lived, unenvied, not unblest ; 
Reason his guide, and happiness his guest. 
In the clear mirror of his moral page. 
We trace the manners of a purer age. 
His soul, with thirst of genuine glory fraught, 
Scorn'd the false lustre of licentious thought. 
— One fair asylum from the world he knew. 
One chosen seat, that charms with various view! 
Who boasts of more (believe the serious strain) 
Sighs for a home, and sighs, alas ! in vain. 
Through each he roves, the tenant of a day. 
And, with the swallow, wings the year away !" 



ON THE DEATH OF A SISTER. 

Man is born to suffer. On the door 

Sickness has set her mark ; and now no more 
Laughter within we hear, or wood-notes wild 
As of a mother singing to her child ; 
All now in anguish from that room retire. 
Where a young cheek glows with consuming fire, 
And innocence breathes contagion — all but one, 
Bui she who gave it birth — from her alone 
The medicine cup is taken. Through the night. 
And through the day, that with its dreary light 
Comes unregarded, she sits silent by, 
Watching the changes with her anxious eye: 
While they without, listening below, above, 
(Who but in sorrow know how much they love?) 
From every little noise catch hope and fear. 
Exchanging still, still as they turn to hear. 
Whispers and sighs, and smiles all tenderness 
That would in vain the starting tear repress. 

Such grief was ours — it seems but yesterday — 
When in tliy prime, wishing so much to stay, 
'Twas thine, Maria, thine without a sigh 
At midnight in a sister's arms to die ! 
Oh thou wert lovely — lovely was thy frame, 
And pure thy spirit as from Heaven it came? 
And, when recall'd to join the blest above, 
Thou died'st a victim to exceeding love. 
Nursing the young to health. In happier hours, 
When idle fancy wove luxuriant flowers. 
Once in thy mirth thou bad'st me write on thee ; 
And now I write — what thou shall never see ! 



SAMUEL ROGERS. 



31 



THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY. 

Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village-green, 
With magic tints to haraionize the scene. 
Still'd is the hum that through the hamlet broke, 
When round the ruins of their ancient oak 
The peasants flock'd to hear the minstrel play, 
And games and carols closed the busy day. 
Her wheel at rest, the matron thrills no more 
With treasured tales, and legendary lore. 
All, all are lied ; nor mirth nor music flows 
To chase the dreams of innocent repose. 
All, all are fled ; yet still I linger here ! 
What secret charms this silent spot endear 1 

Mark yon old mansion frowning through the trees. 
Whose hollow turret woos the whistling breeze. 
That casement, arch'd wit!^i ivy's brownest shade 
First to these eyes the light of heaven convey'd. 
The mouldering gateway strews the grass-grown 

court, 
Once the calm scene of many a simple sport; 
When nature pleased, for life itself was new. 
And the heart promised what the fancy drew. 

See, through the fractured pediment revealed, 
Where moss inlays the rudely-sculptured shield, 
The martin's old, hereditary nest. 
Long may the ruin spare its hallow'd guest ! 

As jars the hinge, what sullen echoes call ! 
Oh, haste, unfold the hospitable hall ! 
That hill, where once, in antiquated state, 
The chair of justice held the grave debate, [hung, 

Now stain'd with dews, with cobwfebs darkly 
Oft has its roof with peals of rapture rung; 
When round yon ample board, in due degree, 
We sweetcn'd every meal with social glee. 
The heart's light liugh pursued the circling jest : 
And all was sunshine in each little breast. 
'T was here we chased the slipper by the sound ; 
And turn'd the blindfold hero round and round. 
'Twas here, at eve, we form'd our fairy ring ; 
And fancy flutter'd on her wildest wing. 
Giants and genii chain'd each wondering ear; 
And orjjhan-sorrows drew the ready tear. 
Oft with the babes we wander'd in the wood. 
Or view'd the forest-feats of Robin Hood : 
Oft, fancy-led, at midnight's fearful hour, 
With startling step we scaled the lonely tower ; 
O'er infant innocence to hang and weep, 
Murder'd by rufli m hands when smiling in its sleep. 

Ye Household Deities ! whose guardian eye 
Mark'd each pure thought, ere register'd on high ; 
Still, still ye walk the consecrated ground. 
And breathe the soul of inspiration round. 

As o'er the dusky furniture I bend, 
Each chair awakes the feeling of a friend. 
The storied arras, source of fond delight, 
With old achievement charms the wilder'd sight ! 
And still, with heraldry's rich hues imprest. 
On the dim window glows the pictured crest. 
The screen unfolds its many-colour'd chart. 
The clonk still points its moral to the heart. 
That faithful monitor 'twas heaven to hear, 
When soft it spoke a promised pleasure near ; 
And has its so])er hand, its simple chime, 
Forgot to trace tlie feather'd feet of Time ? 



That massive beam, with curious carvings wrought, 
Whence the caged linnet soothed my pensive 

thought ; 
Those muskets, cased with venerable rust ; 
Those once-loved forms, still breathing through 

their dust. 
Still, from the frame in mould gigantic cast, 
Starting to life — all whisper of the past ! 

As through the garden's desert paths I rove, 
What fond allusions swarm in every grove ! 
How oft, when purple evening tinged the west, 
We watch'd the emmet to her grainy nest ; 
Welcomed the wild-bee home on weary wing, 
Laden with sweets, the choicest of the spring ! 
How oft inscribed, with friendship's votive rhyme, 
The bark now silver'd by the touch of Time ; 
Soar'd in the swing, half pleased and half afraid, 
Through sister elms that waved their summer-shade; 
Or strew'd with crumbs yon root-inwoven seat. 
To lure the redbreast from his lone retreat ! 

Childhood's loved group revisits every scene ; 
The tangled wood-walk, and the tufted green ! 
Indulgent Memory wakes, and lo, they live! 
Clothed with far softer hues than light can give. 
Thou first, best friend that heaven assigns below 
To soothe and sweeten all the cares we know ; 
Whose glad suggestions still each vain alarm, 
When nature fades, and life forgets to charm ; 
Thee would the muse invoke! — to thee belong 
The sage's precept and the poet's song. 
What soften'd views thy magic glass reveals. 
When o'er thelandscapeTime'smeektwilightsteals! 
As when in ocean sinks the orb of day, 
Long on the wave reflected lustres play ; 
Thy temper'd gleams of happiness resign'd 
Glance on the darken'd mirror of the mind, [gray. 

The school's lone porch, with reverend mosses 
Just tells the pensive pilgrim where it lay. 
Mute is the bell that rung at peep of dawn, 
Quickening my truant-feet across the lawn ; 
Unheard the shout that rent the noontide air. 
When the slow dial gave a pause to care. 
Up springs, at every step, to claim a tear, 
Some little friendship form'd and clierish'd here ; 
And not the lightest leaf, but trembling teems 
With golden visions, and romantic dreams ! 

Down by yon hazel copse, at evening, blazed 
The gipsy's fagot — there we stood and gazed ; 
Gazed on her sun-burnt face with silent awe, 
Her tatter'd mantle, and her hood of straw ; 
Her moving lips, her caldron brimming o'er; 
The drowsy brood that on her back she bore. 
Imps, in the barn with mousing owlets bred, 
From rifled roost at nightly revel fed ! [shade, 

Whose dark eyes flash'd through locks of Idackest 
When in the breeze the distant watch-dog bay'd : — 
And heroes fled the Sibyl's mutter'd call, 
^V'^hosc elfin prowess scaled the orchard-wall. 
As o'er my palm the silver piece she drev*', 
.\nd traced the line of life with searching view. 
How throbb'd my fluttering pulse with hopes and 

fears. 
To learn the colour of my future years ! 

.'Ml, then, wh.it honest triumph flush'd my breast; 
This truth once known — To bless is to be blest ! 



32 



SAMUEL ROGERS. 



We led the bending beggar on his way, 

(Bare were his feet, his tresses silver-gray) 

Soothed the keen pangs his aged spirit felt, 

And on his tale with mute attention dwelt. 

As in his scrip we dropt our little store. 

And sigh'd to think that little was no more, 

He breath'd his prayer, " Long may such goodness 

live !" 
'Twas all he gave, 'twas all he had to give. 
Angels, when mercy's mandate wing'd their flight, 
Had stopt to dwell with pleasure on the sight. 

B at hark ! through those old firs, with sullen swell, 
The church-clock strikes! ye tender scenes, farewell! 
It calls me hence, beneath their shade, to trace 
The few fond lines that Time may soon eflace. 

On yon gray stone, that fronts the chancel-door. 
Worn smooth by busy feet now seen no more. 
Each eve we shot the marble through the ring. 
When the heart danced, and life was in its spring ; 
Alas ! unconscious of the kindred earth. 
That faintly echoed to the voice of mirth. 

The glow-worm loves her emerald-light to shed, 
Where now the sexton rests his hoary head. 
Oft, as he turn'd the greensward with his spade. 
He lectured every youth that round him play'd ; 
And, calmly pointing where our fathers lay. 
Roused us to rival each, the hero of his day. 

Hush, ye fond flutterings, hush ! while here alone 
I search the records of each mouldering stone. 
Guides of my life ! Listructors of my youth ! 
Who first unveil'd the hallow'd form of truth ; 
Whose every word enlighten'd and endear'd ; 
In age beloved, in poverty revered ; 
In friendship's silent register ye live, 
Nor ask the vain memorial art can give. 

But when the sons of peace, of pleasure sleep, 
When only sorrow wakes, and wakes to weep, 
What spells entrance my visionary mind 
With sighs so sweet, with transports so refined ! 

Ethereal Power ! who at the noon of night 
Recall'st the for-fled spirit of delight; 
From whom that musing, melancholy mood 
Which charms the wise, and elevates the good ! 
Blest Memory, hail! Oh grant the grateful muse, 
Her pencil dipt in Nature's living hues, 
To pass the clouds that round thy empire roll. 
And trace its airy precincts in the soul. 

Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain, 
Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain. 
Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise! 
Each stamps its image as the other flies. 
Each, as the various avenues of sense 
Delight or sorrow to the soul dispense. 
Brightens or fades ; yet all, with magic art, 
Control the latent fibres of the heart. 
As studious Prospero's mysterious spell 
Drew every subject-spirit to his cell ; 
Each, at thy call, advances or retires. 
As jud-jment dictates, or the scene inspires. 
Each thrills the seat of sense, that sacred source 
Whence the fine nerves direct their mazy course, 
And through the frame invisibly convey 
The subtle, quick vibrations as they play ; 
Man's little universe at once o'erca'^t, 
At once illumined when the cloud is past. 



LOCH-LONG. 

Blue was the loch, the clouds were gone, 
Ben-Lomond in his glory shone, 
M'hen, Luss, I left thee ; when the breeze 
Bore me from thy silver sands. 
Thy kirk-yard wall among the trees, 
Where, gray with age, the dial stands; 
That dial so well known to me ! 
— Though many a shadow it had shed. 
Beloved sister, since with thee 
The legend on the stone was read. 

The fairy isles fled far away ; 
That with its woods and uplands green 
Where shepherd-huts are dimly seen, 
And songs are heard at close of day ; 
That too, the deer's wild covert, fled. 
And that, the asylum of the dead : 
Wiiile, as the boat went merrily. 
Much of Rob Roy the boatman told ; 
His arm that full below his knee, 
His cattle-ford and mountain hold. 

Tarbat, thy shore I climb'd at last; 
And, thy shady region pass'd, 
Upon another shore I stood. 
And look'd upon another flood ; 
Great Ocean's self ! ('Tis He who fills 
That vast and awful depth of hills ;) 
Where many an elf was playing round, 
Who treads unshod his classic ground; 
And speaks, his native rocks among. 
As Fingal spoke, and Ossian sung. 

Night fell ; and dark and darker grew 
That narrow sea, that narrow sky. 
As o'er the glimmering waves we flew ; 
The sea-bird rustling, v^'ailing by. 

And now the grampus, half-descried, 

Black and huge above the tide; 

The cliffs and promontories there. 

Front to front, and broad and bare ; 

Each beyond each, with giant feet 

Advancing as in haste to meet ; 

The shatter'd fortress, whence the Dane 

Blew his shrill blast, nor rush'd in vain, 

Tyrant of the drear domain ; 

All into midnight shadow sweep — 

When (lay springs upward from the deep ! 

Kindling the waters in its flight, 

The prow wakes splendour ; and the oar, 

That rose and fell unseen before. 

Flashes in a sea of light ! 

Glad sign and sure ! for now we hail 

Thy flowers, Glenfinnart, in the gale; 

And bright indeed the path should be. 

That leads to friendship and to thee ! 
Oh, blest retreat and sacred too ! 

Sacred as when the bell of prayer 

ToH'd duly on the desert air, 

And crosses deck'd thy summits blue. 

Oft, like some loved romantic tale. 

Oft shall my weary mind recall. 

Amid the hum and stir of men. 

Thy becchen grove and waterfall. 

Thy ferry with its gliding sail. 

And Her — the Lady of the Glen ! 



SAMUEL ROGERS. 



33 



GINEVRA. 

If ever you should come to Modena, 
(Where among other relics you may see 
Tassoni's bucket — but 'tis not the true one) 
Stop at a palace near the Reggio-gate, 
Dwelt in of old by one of the Donati, 
Its noble gardens, terrace above terrace, 
And rich in fountains, statues, cypresses, 
Will long detain you — but, before you go, 
Enter the house — forget it not, I pray you — 
And look awhile upon a picture there. 

'T is of a lady in her earliest youth. 
The last of that illustrious family ; 
Done by Zampieri — but by whom I care not. 
He who observes it — ere he passes on. 
Gazes his fill, and comes and comes again, 
That he may call it up, when far away. 

She sits, inclining forward as to speak. 
Her lips half open, and her finger up, 
As though she said " Beware !" her vest of gold 
Broider'd with flowers and clasp'd fr >m head to foot. 
An emerald stone in every golden clasp; 
And on her brow, fairer than alabaster, 
A coronet of pearls. 

But then her face. 
So lovely, yet so arch, so full of mirth. 
The overflowings of an innocent heart — 
It haunts nie still, though many a year has fled. 
Like some wild melody ! 

Along it hangs 
Over a mouldering heir-loom, its companion, 
An oaken-chest, half-eaten by the worm. 
But richly carved by Antony of Trent, 
With scripture-stories from the Life of Christ ; 
A chest that came from Venice, and had held 
The ducal robes of some old ancestor — 
That, by the way — it may be true or false — 
But don't forget the picture; and you will not, 
When you have heard the tale they told me there. 

She was an only child — her name Ginevra ; 
The joy, the pride of an indulgent father ; 
And in her fifteenth year became a bride, 
Marrying an only son, Francesco Doria, 
Her playmate from her birth, and her first love. 

Just as she looks there in her bridal dress. 
She was all gentleness, all gayety, 
Her pranks the favourite theme of every tongue. 
But now the day was come, the day, the hour ; 
Now, frowning, smiling for the hundredth time, 
The nurse, that ancient lady, preach'd decorum ; 
And, in the lustre of her youth, she gave 
Her hand, with her heart in it, to Francesco. 

Great was the joy ; but at the nuptial feast. 
When all sate down, the bride herself was wanting. 
Nor was she to be found ! Her father cried, 
"'Tis but to make a trial of our love !" 
And fill'd his glass to all ; but his hand shook. 
And soon from guest to guest the panic spread. 
'T was but that instant she had left Francesco, 
Laughing and looking bark and flying still. 
Her ivory tooth imprinted on his finger. 
But now, alas ! she was not to be found ; 
Nor from that hour could any thing be guess'd. 
But that she was not ! 
5 



Weary of his life, 
Francesco flew to Venice, and, embarking, 
Flung it away in battle with the Turk. 
Donati lived — and long might you have seen 
An old man wandering as in quest of something. 
Something he could not find — he knew not what. 
When he was gone, the house remain'd awhile 
Silent and tenantless — then went to strangers. 
Full fifty years were past, and all forgotten, 
When on an idle day, a day of search 
Mid the old lumber in the gallery. 
That mouldering chest was noticed ; and 't was said 
By one as young, as thoughtless as Ginevra, 
" Why not remove it from its lurking-place 1" 
'T was done as soon as said ; but on the way 
It burst, it fell ; and lo, a skeleton. 
With here and there a pearl, an emerald -stone, 
A golden clasp, clasping a shred of gold. 
All else had perish'd — save a wedding-ring, 
And a small seal, her mother's legacy, 
Engraven with a name, the name of both, 
" Ginevra." 

There then had she found a grave ! 
Within that chest had she conceal'd herself. 
Fluttering with joy, the happiest of the happy ; 
When a spring-lock, that lay in ambush there. 
Fastened her down for ever I 



THE FOUR ERAS. 

The lark has sung his carol in the sky ; 

The bees have humin'd their noontide harmony ; 

Still in the vale the village-bells ring round. 

Still in Llewellyn-hail the jests resound : 

For now the caudle-cup is circling there. 

Now, glad at heart, the gossips breathe their pray'r, 

And, crowding, stop the cradle to admire 

The babe, the sleeping image of his sire. [hail 

A few short years — and then these sounds shall 
The day again, and gladness fill the vale; 
So soon the child a youth, the youth a man, 
Eager to run the race his fathers ran. 
Then the huge ox shall yield the broad sir-loin; 
The ale, now brew'd, in floods of amber shine : 
And, basking in the chimney's ample blaze, 
Mid many a tale told of his boyish days. 
The nurse shall cry, of all her ills beguiled, 
" 'T was on these knees he sate so oft and smiled." 

And soon again shall music swell the breeze ; 
Soon, issuing forth, shall glitter through the trees 
Vestures of nuptial white ; and hymns be sung, 
And violets scatter'd round ; and old and young, 
In every cottage porch, with garlands green, 
Stand still to gaze, and. gazing, bless the scene ; 
While, her dark eyes declining, by his side 
Moves in her virgin-veil the gentle bride. 

And once, alas, nor in a distant hour, 
Another voice shall come from yonder tower; 
When in dim chambers long black weeds are seen. 
And weepings heard where only joy has been ; 
When by his children borne, and from his door 
Slowly departing to return no more. 
He rests in holy earth with them that went before. 



34 



SAMUEL ROGERS, 



DON GARZIA. 

Among the awful forms that stand assembled 
In the great square of Florence, may be seen 
That Cosmo, not the father of his country. 
Not he so styled, but he who play'd the tyrant. 
Clad in rich armour like a paladin, 
But with his helmet ofl' in kingly state, 
Aloft he sits upon his horse of brass ; 
And they who read the legend underneath 
Go and pronounce him happy. Yet there is 
A chamber at Grosseto, that, if walls 
Could speak and tell of what is done within, 
Would turn your admiration into pity. 
Half of what pass'd died with him ; but the rest, 
All he discover'd when the fit was on, 
All that, by those who listen'd, could be glean'd 
From broken sentences, and starts in sleep, 
Is told, and by an honest chronicler. 

Two of his sons, Giovanni and Garzia, 
(The eldest had not seen his sixteenth summer,) 
Went to the chase ; but one of them, Giovanni, 
His best beloved, the glory of his house, 
Return'd not; and at close of day was found 
Bathed in his innocent blood. Too well, alas, 
The trembling Cosmo guess'd the deed, the doer; 
And, having caused the body to be borne 
Iti secret to that chamber, at an hour 
When all slept sound, save the disconsolate mother, 
Who little thought of what was yet to come, 
And lived but to be told — he bade Garzia 
Arise and follow him. Holding in one hand 
A winking lamp, and in the other a key 
Massive and dungeon-like, thither he led ; 
And, having entered in and lock'd the door, 
The father fix'd his eyes upon the son, 
And closely question'd hiui. No change betray'd 
Or guilt or fear. Then Cosmo lifted up 
The bloody sheet. " Look there ! Look there !" 

he cried, 
" Blood calls for blood — and from a father's hand! 
Unless thyself wilt save him that sad office. 
"What!" he exclaiin'd, when, shuddering at the 

sight, 
The boy breathed out, " I stood but on my guard." 
" Dar'st thou then blacken one who never wrong'd 

thee. 
Who would not set his foot upon a wormi 
Yes, thou must die, lest others fall by thee, 
And thou shouldst be the slayer of us all." 
Then from Garzia's side he took the dagger. 
That fatal one which spilt his brother's blood ; 
And, kneeling on the ground, " Great God !" he 

cried, 
" Grant me the strength to do an act of justice, 
Thou knowest what it costs me ; but, alas. 
How can I spare myself, sparing none else ? 
Grant me the strength, the will, — and oh ! forgive 
The sinful soul of a most wretched son. 
'T is a most wretched father who implores it." 
^ Long on Garzia's neck he hung, and wept 
Tenderly, long press'd him to his bosom; 
And then, but while he held him by the arm. 
Thrusting him backward, turned away his face, 
And stabb'd him to the heart. 



Well might De Thou, 
When in his youth he came to Cosmo's court, 
Think on the past ; and, as he wander'd through 
The ancient palace — through those ample spaces 
Silent, deserted — stop awhile to dwell 
Upon two portraits there, drawn on the wall 
Together, as of two in bonds of love. 
One in a cardinal's habit, one in black, 
Those of the unhappy brothers, and infer 
From the deep silence that his questions drew, 
The terrible truth. 

Well might he heave a sigh 
For poor humanity, when he beheld 
That very Cosmo shaking o'er his fire, 
Drowsy and deaf, and inarticulate. 
Wrapt in his night-gown, o'er a sick man's mess. 
In the last stage — ileath-struck and deadly pale ; 
His wife, another, not his Eleanora, 
At once his nurse and his interpreter. 



THE FOUNTAIN. 

It was a well 
Of whitest marble, white as from the quarry; 
And richly wrought with many a high relief, 
Greek sculpture — in some earlier day perhaps 
A tomb, and honour'd with a hero's ashes. 
The water from the rock fiU'd, overflow'd it; 
Then dash'd away, playing the prodigal, 
And soon was lost — stealing unseen, unheard. 
Through the long grass and round the twisted roots 
Of aged trees; discovering where it ran 
By the fresh verdure. Overcome with heat, 
I threw me down ; admiring, as I lay. 
That shady nook, a singing-place for birds. 
That grove so intricate, so full of flowers. 
More than enough to please a child a-Maying. 

The sun was down, a distant convent-bell 
Ringing the Angelus ,- and now approach'd 
The hour for stir and village-gossip there. 
The hour Rebekah came, when from the well 
She drew with such alacrity to serve 
The stranger and his camels. Soon I heard 
Footsteps ; and lo, descending by a path 
Trodden for ages, many a nymph appear'd, 
Appear'd and vanish'd, bearing on her head 
Her earthen pitcher. It call'd up the day 
Ulysses landed there ; and long I gazed. 
Like one awaking in a distant time. 

At length there came the loveliest of them all. 
Her little brother dancing down before her ; 
And ever as he spoke, which he did ever. 
Turning and looking up in warmth of heart 
And brotherly affection. Stopping there, 
She join'd her rosy hands, and, filling them 
With the pure element, gave him to drink ; 
And, while he qucnch'd his thirst, standing on tip- 
Look'd down upon him with a sister's smile, [toe, 
Nor stirr'd till he had done, fix'd as a statue. 

Then, hadst thou seen them as they stood, Canova, 
Thou hadst endow'd them with immortal youth ; 
And they had evermore lived undivided. 
Winning all hearts — of all thy works the fairest. 



SAMUEL ROGERS. 



35 



VENICE. 

No track of men, no footsteps to and fro, 

Led to her gates. The path lay o'er the sea, 

Invisible ; and from the land we went 

As to a floating city — steering in, 

And gliding up her streets as in a dream, 

So smoothly, silently — by many a dome 

Mosque-like, and many a stately portico, 

The statues ranged along an azure sky ; 

By many a pile in more than Eastern splendour. 

Of old the residence of merchant-kings; 

The fronts of some, though Time had shattcr'd 

them, 
Still glowing with the richest hues of art, 
As though the wealth within them had run o'er. 

Thither I came, in the great passage-boat. 
From Padua, where the stars are, night by night, 
Watch'd from the top of an old dungeon-tower. 
Whence blood ran once, the tower of Ezzclino — 
Not as he watch'd them, when he read his fate 
And shudder'd. But of him I thought not then. 
Him or his horoscope; far, far from me [there. 
The forms of guilt and fear; though some were 
Sitting among us round the cabin-board. 
Some who, like him, had cried, "Spill blood enough!" 
And could shake long at shadows. They had play'd 
Their parts at Padua, and were now returning; 
A vagrant crew, and careless of to-morrow. 
Careless, and full of mirth. Who, in that quaver. 
Sings "Caro, Caro]" — 'T is the Prima Donna! 
And to her monkey, smiling in his face. 
Who, as transported, cries, "Bravo ! Ancoral" 
'T is a grave personage, an old macaw, 
Perch'd on her shoulder. But mark him who leaps 
Ashore, and with a shout urges along 
The lagging mules ; then runs and climbs a tree 
That with its branches overhangs the stream. 
And, like an acorn, drops on deck again. 
'Tis he who speaks not, stirs not, but we laugh; 
That child of fun and frolic, Arlecchino. 

At length we leave the river for the sea. 
At length a voice aloft proclaims " Venezia!" 
And, as call'd forth, it comes. A few in fear, 
Flying away from him whose boast it was, 
That the grass grew not where his horse had trod. 
Gave birth to Venice. Like the water-fowl. 
They built their nests among the ocean-waves ; 
And, where the sands were shifting, as the wind 
Blew from the north, the south; where they that came 
Had to make sure the ground they stood upon. 
Rose, like an exhalation, from the Jeep, 
A vast metropolis, with glittering spires, 
With theatres, basilicas adorn'd ; 
A scene of light and glory, a dominion. 
That has endured the longest among men. 

And whence the talisman by which she rose, 
Towering? 'T was found there in the barren sea. 
Want led to enterprise ; and, far or near, 
Who met not the Venetian 1 — now in Cairo, 
Ere yet the Catiia came, listening to hear 
Its bells, approaching from the Red-Sea coast ; 
Now on the Euxine, on the Sea of Azoph, 
In converse with the Persian, with the Russ, 



The Tartar ; on his lowly deck receiving 
Pearls from the gulf of Ormus, gems from Bagdad; 
Eyes brighter yet, that shed the light of love. 
From Georgia, from Circassia. Wandering round 
When in the rich bazar he saw, display'd. 
Treasures from unknown climes, away he went, 
And, travelling slowly upward, drew ere long 
From the well-head, supplying all belovsr; 
Making the imperial city of the East, 
Herself, his tributary. 

If we turn 
To the Black Forest of the Rhine, the Danube, 
Where o'er the narrow glen the castle hangs. 
And, like the wolf that hunger'd at his gate. 
The baron lived by rapine — tiicre we meet, 
In warlike guise, the caravan from Venice ; 
Winning its v/ay with all that can attract. 
Cages, whence every wild cry of the desert. 
Jugglers, stage-dancers. Well might Charlemain 
And his brave peers, each with his visor up, 
On their long lances lean and gaze awhile. 
When the Venetian to their eyes disclosed 
The wonders of the East ! Well might they then 
Sigh for new conquests ! 

Thus did Venice rise. 
Thus flourish, till the unwelcome tidings came, 
That in the Tagus had arrived a fleet 
From India, from the region of the sun, 
Fragrant with spices — that a way was found, 
A channel open'd, and the golden stream 
Turn'd to enrich another. Then she felt 
Her strength departing, and at last she fell. 
Fell in an instant, blotted oat and razed ; 
She who had stood yet longer than the longest 
Of the four kingdoms, — who, as in an ark. 
Had floated down, amid a thousand wrecks, 
Uninjured, from the old world to the new. 
From the last trace of civilized life — to where 
Light shone again, and with unclouded splendour. 
Through many an age she in the mid-sea dwelt, 
From her retreat calmly contemplating 
The changes of the earth, herself unchanged. 
Before her pass'd, as in an awful dream. 
The mightiest of the mighty. What are thef?e, 
Clothed in their purple ! O'er the globe they fling 
Their monstrous shadows ; and, while yet we speak, 
Phantom-like, vanish with a dreadful scream ! 
What — but the last that styled themselves the 

CfBsars ] 
And who in long array (look where they come — 
Their gesture menacing so far and wide) 
Wear the green turban an<l the heron's ])lume ? 
Who but the caliphs ] follow'd fast by shapes 
As new and strange — some, men of steel, steel-clad; 
Others, nor long, alas, the interval. 
In light and gay attire, with brow serene, 
Wielding Jove's thunder, scattering sulphurous fire 
Mingled with darkness; and, among the rest, 
Lo, one by one, passing continually, 
Those who assume a sway beyond them all ; 
Men gray with age, each with a triple crown. 
And in his tremulous hands grasping the keys 
That can alone, as he would signify, 
Unlock Heaven's gate. 



Sm EGERTON BRYDGES. 



Sir Samuel Egerton Brybges was born 
at the raanor-liouse of Wootlon, between Can- 
terbury and Dover, on the 30th of Novem- 
ber, 1762. By his mother, an Egerton, he 
was descended from the most illustrious blood 
in Europe. Through his father, he claimed 
to be the representative of the old barony of 
Chandos. This pretension, which was pro- 
secuted unsuccessfully before the House of 
Lords, was " the cherished madness" of Sir 
Egerton; it has a ludicrous prominence 
in nearly all his writinu-s ; and its failure 
deeply imbittered his spirit. The perusal of 
Mr. Beltz's hostile and uncandid volume 
leaves the impression that this claim was well 
founded : but the case is a mysterious one, and 
was involved in great doubt, even before Lord 
Eldon spoke upon it. 

In 1780, he entered Queen's College, Cam- 
bridge : he there devoted himself to poetry, 
neglected the regular studies, and left the uni- 
versity without a degree. He undertook the 
study of the law, and in 1787 was called to 
the bar; but never made anj' progress in the 
profession. His career as an author began by 
the publication of a volume of poems in 1785. 
In the succeeding years, he wrote the novels 
"Mary de Clifford," "Arthur Fitz Albini," 
and " Le Forester ;" but was chiefly occupied 
with bibliographical and genealogical inves- 
tigations. The " Censura Literaria," and the 
" Restituta," are familiar to the students of 
literary history. His edition of "Collins' 
Peerage," which employed him from 1806 to 
1812, is probably the most laborious of all his 
works. In 1812, he published a series of 
Essays, under the title of " The Ruminator :" 
Lord Byron, in one of his journals, speaks of 
having read them, and characterizes the author 
as "a strange, but able old man." "Occa- 
sional Poems" appeared in 1814; and "Ber- 
tram," a poem, in 1815. In 1814, be obtained 
a baronetcy. He became a member of the 
House of Commons in 1812, where he dis- 
tinguished himself by procuring some im- 
portant improvements in the law of copy-rigbt. 
Upon the dissolution of that parliament in 
1818, he withdrew to the continent, where, 
with little exception, he passed the remainder 



of his days. Pecuniary embarrassment, in- 
duced by the indulgence of various expensive 
tastes, was understood to be the cause of this 
voluntary exile. He resided in Paris, Italy, 
but mostly at or near Geneva. In literature, 
he sought relief from the annoyances of con- 
tracted circumstances and disappointed hopes ; 
and he was constantly engaged in writing and 
printing boofe. It is impracticable to give a 
complete list of his works. The best of those 
written while on the continent are, " Res Li- 
teraria;," 1820, 1821; "Letters from the Con- 
tinent," 1821 ; " Gnomica," and "Letters on 
the Genius of Lord Byron," perhaps the most 
valuable of his productions, 1824 ; " Recol- 
lections of foreign Travel," 1825 ; " Imaginary 
Biography," and his own Autobiography, in 
1834. His edition of "Milton," with a life 
of that poet, has made his name better 
known to the public than any other of his 
performances. He died at Campagne Gros 
Jean, near Geneva, on the 8th of September, 
1837. 

To no prose writer of our time is English 
literature beholden for finer passages of just 
thought, high sentiment, and finished elo- 
quence, than to. Sir Egerton Brydges. But 
the effect of these is sadly impaired by repeti- 
tions, egotism, and all the infirmities of morbid 
passion. A judicious selection of his best 
paragraphs would form a volume of singular 
interest and beauty. To the success of his 
ardent wish to take a permanent place among 
the great authors of his country, there wanted 
nothing but patience, control of temper, and 
the prolonged concentration of his powers 
upon some one great work on some important 
subject. Unluckily for his ambition, the in- 
tensity of the desire paralyzed the vigour of 
the effort. 

His verse is the expression of sensitive 
feeling elevated and coloured by romantic 
fancy : it is marked by a delicate sense of the 
beauties of nature, and displays great com- 
mand of the resources of language. Under 
the criticisms of his friend, Lord Tenter- 
den, he practised the art " de faire des vers 
difficilement." His sonnet upon " Echo and 
Silence" was pronounced by Wordsworth 



SIR EGERTON BRYDGES, 



37 



the best sonnet in the language; and Mr. 
SouTHEY said, that he knew not any poem 
in any language more beautifully imaginative. 
The two last lines finely imitate to the ear the 
thronging echoes which they describe. "The 
Winds," and the lines " Written on the Ap- 
proach of cold Weather," are scarcely inferior ; 
and the sonnets, "To Evening," and "To 
Autumn," ace constructed with consummate 
skill. The sonnets on Harry Hastings are 
a series of cabinet pictures, which deserve 



careful study. They are in a style of art, to 
which, with the saving of a very few of Mr. 
Wordsworth's sonnets, the literature of this 
age is a stranger. In respect to finish, tone, 
and the magical effect by which a single image 
is made to flash the whole scene upon the 
mind, they remind us of the rural elegies of 
TimiLLUS. The life of the old sportsman is 
revived before us, with astonishing complete- 
ness. The name of the author of those son- 
nets will not die. 



ECHO AND SILENCE. 

In edJying course when leaves began to fly, 
And Autumn in her lap the store to strew, 
As mid wild scenes I chanced tiie Muse to woo. 

Thro' trlens untrod, and woods that frown'd on high, 

Two sleeping nymphs with wonder mute I spy ! 
And, lo, she's gone ! — In robe of dark-green hue 
'T was Echo from her sister Silence flew, 

For quick the hunter's horn resounded to the sky! 

In shade aftVighted Silence melts away. 

Not so her sister. — Hark ! for onward still, 

With far-heard step, she takes her listening way. 
Bounding from rock to rock, and hill to hill. 
Ah, mark the merry maid in mockful play 

With thousand mimic tones the laughing forest fill ! 



THE APPROACH OF COLD WEATHER. 

OxF. morn, w!iat time the sickle 'gan to piny. 

The eastern gates of heaven were open laid, 

When forth the rosy Hours did lead a maid, 
From her sweet eyes who shed a soften'd ray. 

Blushing and fair she was ; and from the braid 
Of her gold locks she shook forth perfumes gay : 

Yet languid look'd and indolently stray'd 
A while, to watch the harvest borne away. 
But now, with sinews braced, and aspect hale, 

With buskin'd legs, and quiver 'cross her flung. 
With hounds and horn she seeks the wood and vale. 

And Echo listens to her forest song. 

At eve, she flies to hear her poet's tale, [among. 
And "Autumn's" name resounds his shades 



THE WINDS. 

SrRT.i^iE the pleasure, meditating song, 
LulI'd by the piping of the winds to lie, 
While, ever and anon collecting, fly 

The choir still swelling as they haste along, 
And shake with full -Eolian notes the sky. 

A pause ensues : the sprites, that lead the throng, 
' Recall their force ; and first, begin to sigh ; 

Then howls the gathering stream the rocking 
domes among. 
Methinks I hear the shrieking spirits oft 

Groan in the blast, and flying tempests lead r 
While some aerial beings sighing soft [plead; 

Round once-loved maids their guardian wishes 
Spirits of torment shrilly speak aloft, 

And warn the wretch, who rolls in guilt, to heed. 



TO EVENING. 

SwEKT Eve, of softest voice and gentlest beam, 

Say, since the pensivestrains thou once didst hear 
Of him,* the bard sublime of Arun's stream, 

Will aught beside delight thy nicer ear ? 
Me wilt thou give to praise thy shadowy gleam, 

Thy fragrant breath, and dying nmrmurs dear; 
The mists, that o'er thee from thy valleys steam, 

And elfin shapes that round thy car appear; 
The music that attends thy state ; the bell 

Of distant fold ; the gently warbling wind 
And watch-dog's hollow voice from cottaged delll 

For these to purest pleasure wake the mind ; 

Lull each tumultuous passion to its cell ; 
And leave soft, soothing images behind. 

TO A LADY IN ILLNESS. 

New to the world, when all was fairy ground. 
And shapes romantic stream'd before my sight, 
Thy beauty caught my soul, and tints as bright 

And fair as fancy's dreams in thee I found. 

In cold experience when my hopes were drown'd, 
And life's dark clouds o'er-veil'd in mists of night 
The forms that wont to fill me with delight, 

Thy view again dispell'd the darkness round. 

Shall I forget thee, when the pallid cheek. 

The sighing voice, wan looks, and plaintive air, 

No more the roseate hue of health bespeak 1 
Shall I neglect thee as no longer fair ? 

No, lovely maid ! If in my heart I seek, 
Thy beauty deeply is engraven there. 



TO AUTUMN, NEAR HER DEPARTURE. 

TuoiT maid of gentle light ! thy straw-wove vest. 
And russet cincture ; thy loose pale-tinged hair; 
Thy melancholy voice, and languid air, 

As if, shut up within that pensive breast, 

Some ne'er-to-be-divulged grief w^as prest; 

Thy looks resign'd. that smiles of [latience wear. 
While Winter's blasts thy scatter'd tresses tear; 

Thee, Autumn, with divinest charms have blest ! 

Let lilooming Spring with gaudy hopes delight 
That dazzling Summer shall of her be born, 

Jjet Sunnner blaze; and Winter's stormy train 

Breathe awful music in the car of Night; 
Thee will I court, sweet dying maid forlorn, 

And from thy glance will catch th' inspired strain. 

* Collins. 
D 



38 



SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. 



TO MARY. 

FROM THE NOVEL OF MARY DE CLIFFORD. 

Wherf, art thou, Mary, pure as fair, 
And fragrant as the bahny air, 
That, passing, steals upon its wing 
The varied perfumes of the spring 1 
"With tender bosom, white as snow ; 
With auburn locks, that freely How 
Upon thy marble neck ; with cheeks 
On which the blush of morning breaks ; 
Eyes, in whose pure and heavenly beams 
The radiance of enchantment seems; 
A voice, whose melting tones would still 
The madness of revenge from ill ; 
A form of such a graceful mould. 
We scarce an earthly shape behold ; 
A mind of so divine a fire 
As angels only could inspire ! — 
Where art thou, Mary '? For the sod 
Is hallow'd where thy feet have trod ; 
And every leaf that's touch'd by thee 
Is sanctified, sweet maid, to me. 
Where dost thou lean thy pensive head 1 
Thy tears what tender tale can shed 1 
Where dost thou stretch thy snowy arm 1 
And with thy plaintive accents charm ? 
But hold ! that image through my frame 
Raises a wild tempestuous flame. 



HASTINGS' SONNETS.* 



Olt) HaiTy Hastings ! of thy forest life 

How whimsical, how picturesque the charms! 
Yet it was sensual! With thy hounds and horn, 
How cheerily didst thou salute the morn ! 

With airy steed didst thou pursue the strife. 
Sounding through all the woodland glades alarms. 
Sunk not a dell, and not a thicket grew, 
But thy skill'd eye and long experience knew. 

The herds were thy acquaintance ; antler'd deer 

Knew where to trust thy voice, and where to fear ; 
And through the shadowy oaks of giant size. 

Thy bugle could the distant sylvans hear; [rise ; 
And wood-nymphs from theirbowery bed would 
And echoes dancing round repeat their ec- 
stacies. 

* " Scarce any English reader of biographical anec- 
dotes is unacquainted with the character of Henry Has- 
tings, of Wooillaniis, in Dorsetsliire, given by Lord 
Shaftesbi'rv ; wliich may be seen in the ' Connoisseur,' 
tn Gilpin's ' New Forest,' and in the last edition of ' Col- 
lins' Peerage,' Sec. He was son of an Earl of Huntino- 
DON ; he lived through the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, 
James I., and Charles I., and died on the verge of a 
hundred years of age. Like Claiidian's ' Old Man of 
Verona,' he did not trouble himself with affairs of state, 
but enjoyed his own country-life amid the woods and 
fields. His father was George, fourth earl, who died in 
1605 ; Henry died 5th October, 10.50, aged ninety-nine. 
There is something exceedingly picturesque in the ac- 
count of this Haruy Hastings' life ; and I am willing to 
dehide myself with the belief, that the following sonnets 
not unaptly describe it." 



A century did not thy vigour pale, 

Nor war and rapine thy enjoyments cloud; 
And thy halloos were gay, and clear, and loud, 

To thy last days, through covert, hill, and vale: 

The keepers heard it on the autumnal gale, 
And with responsive horns, in blasts as proud, 
Their labours to the cherish'd service vow'd, 

Delighted their old merrj' lord to hail. 

The forest girls peep'd out, and buxom wives, 
And in the leaf-strown glades and yellow lanes 

Each for the kindly salutation strives. 

Which to their smiles the gladsome veteran 
deigns. 

Hark how, on courser mounted, in his vest 

Of green, the aged sportsman cracks his blithesome 
jest! 

III. 
Then coiues the rude and hospitable hall : 

Mark how abound the trophies of the chase ! 
How thick they mingle on the armour'd wall ! 

What antler'd ornaments the portals grace ! 
There blazon'd shields the proud remembrance call 

Of many a noble, many a princely race ; 
And many a glorious rise, and many a fall, 

As upward they the stream of ages trace. 
How glad the old man, far from civil brawl. 

Of a more tranquil being boasts th' embrace ! 
His sleeping hounds, round the hearth gather'd, 
wake 

At the gay burst of his exulting song; 
And all, his joyous bounty to partake, 

Leap to his call, and round his table throng. 

IT. 

To-morrow will the music of their cries 

Pierce through the shadowy solitudes again. 
As with the dawn he to the covert hies. 

And seeks his prey amid the sylvan reign. 
Behold the merry men chanting in his train, 

See how the coy stag listens with surprise ! 
In troops they hasten to their depths again ; 

And with big tears his fate the murk\l one eyes. 
Groans through the forest, echoes from the hills, 

A mingled day of joy and grief proclaim : 
A tempest gathers, and the welkin fills, 

And for another morning saves the game. 
Then on the Book of Sports the veteran pores, 
And deems it wiser spell than learning's lores. 



A hundred years to live, and live in joy ! 
O what a favour'd fate ! The blessed air. 
In all its purity of leaf and flower ; 
The woodland peace, the contemplative hour ; 
The stillness which no city-broils aiuioy ; 
Security from envy, malice, care ; 
The gales that fragrance to the spirit bear; [fair; 
The scenes in nature's unstain'd brightness 
The lulling murmur of the lonely trees ; 
The ambient bracing of the buoyant breeze; 
The very health on forest-beauty's face ; 

The form robust in woodland pastures bred ; — 
With what a tranquil and uncumber'd pace 

Might tlius we reach the slumbers of the 
dead! 



SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. 



39 



But is congenial quiet, and of frame 

Sound health, sufficient 1 Does not mind demand 
Food and exhilaration! Conscience, ever 
Busy within us, must fulfil its aim ! 

Around us circles an aerial band, 

Wliich tells us spiritual labours to endeavour; 

And not alone the senses to employ, 

As the pure channels of our earthly joy ! 
There is, within, a deity, whose desires 
We must sustain and feed by mental fires ; 
The insatc mind, but from without supplied, 

Languishes on a weak imperfect food ; 
If sustenance more spiritual be denied, 

With flame consuming on itself 'twill brood ! 

VII. 

But in this rural life, mid nature's forms 
Of grandeur and of beauty, why assume 
That Harry Hastings had no inward joy 
Of sentiment, and conscience-cherish'd thought] 
When splendour of internal structure warms 
The bosom's lighted mirrors, which allume 
The soul's recesses, spirits then employ 
Theirskillin webs with mingled figures wroug'nt. 
Part from vvithin of heavenly elements, 

They add to what external sense supplies ; 
Then mind and conscience give their pure assents, 

And airy shapes start up, and visions rise; 
And though the fancies pass unspelt away, 
Perchance they form the sunshine of the day ! 

VIII. 

There is exhilaration in the chase — 

Not bodily only ! Bursting from the woods, 
Or having climb'd some misty mountain's height, 
When on our eyes a glorious prospect opes, 
With rapture we the golden view embrace : 

Then worshipping the sun, on silver floods 
And blazing towers, and spires, and cities bright 

With his reflected bea ins ; and down the slopes 
The tumbling torrents ; from the forest-mass 

Of darkness issuing, we with double force 
Along the gayly chrcker'd landscape pass, 

And, bounding with delight, pursue our course. 
It is a mingled rapture, and we find 
The bodily spirit mounting to the mind. 



ON MOOR PARK, 

FORMERI.V THE SEAT OF SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE WHOSE 
HEART WAS BURIED IN THE GARDEN THERE. 

To yonder narrow vale, whose high-sloped sides 
Are hung with airy oaks, and umbrage deep — 
Where through thick shades the lulling waters creep; 

And no vile noise the musing mind derides, 

But silence with calm solitude abides — 
Temple with joy retired, that he might keep 
A course of ijuiet days, and niglitly sleep 

Beneath the covering wings of heavenly guides — 

Virtue and peace ! Here he in sweet repose 
Sigh'd his last breath! Here Hwift, in youth reclined, 

Pass'd his smooth days. — Oh. had he longer chose 
Retreats so pure, perchance his nicer mind, 

That the world's wildering follies and its woes 
To madness shook, had ne'er with sorrows pined ! 



WRITTEN AUGUST 20, 1807. 

THotTGH in my veins the blood of monarchs flow — 
Plantagenet and Tudor — not for these 
With empty boast my lifted mind I please ; 

But rather that my heart's emotions glow 

With the pure flame the muse's gifts bestow : 
Nor would it my aspiring soul appease. 
In rank, birth, wealth, to loll at sensual ease. 

And none but folly's stupid flattery know. 
But yet vi'hcn upstart greatness turns an eye 

Of scorn and insult on my modest fame. 

And on descent's pretensions vain would try 

To build the honours of a nobler name. 

With pride defensive swelling, I exclaim, [vie !" 
" Base one, e'en there with me thou dost not 



WRITTEN AT PARIS, MAY 10, 1825. 

Stkrn, unexpecting good, unbent by wrong, 
I travel onward through this gloomy scene, 
With brow of sorrow, yet erect in mien ; 

Meek to the humble, in defiance strong, 

To folly's, envy's, hatred's, falsehood's throng: 
Yet knowing that the birth and grave between 
There ever will, as ever there have been. 

Be friendships fickle, warfares deep and long ! 

If I have taught the truths of wisdom's lore. 
If I have drawn the secrets of the heart, 

And raised the glow that mounts o'er grief and ill — 

In my plain verse though bloom no single flower. 
And not a ray of wit its lustre dart, 

Its naked strength o'er death will triumph still ! 



WRITTEN AT PARIS, MAY 11, 1826. 

HiRH name of poet ! — sought in every age 

By thousands — scarcely won by two or three, — 

.\s with the thorns of this sad pilgrimage 

My bleeding feet are doom'd their war to wage, 
With awful worship I have bow'd to thee ! 
And yet perchance it is not fate's decree. 
This mighty boon should be assign'd to me. 

My heart's consuming fever to assuage. — ■ 

Fountain of Poesy ! that liest deep 

Within tlie bosom's innermost recesses, 
And rarely burstest forth to human ear. 

Break out ! — and, while profoundly magic sleep 
With pierceless veil all outward form oppresses, 
Let me the music of thy murmurs hear. 



WRITTEN AT LEE PRIORY, AUGUST 10, 1826. 

PnATsE of the wise and good ! — it is a meed 

For which I would lone years of toil endure; 

Which many a peril, many a grief would cure ! 
As onward I with weary feet proceed, 
Mv swelling heart continues still to bleed; 

The glittering prize holds out its distant lure. 

But seems, as nearer I approach, less sure. 
And never to my prayer to be decreed! — 

With anxious car I listen to the voice 
That shall pronounce the precious boon I ask ; 

But yet it comes not, — or it comes in doubt — 
Slave to the passion of my earliest choice. 

From youth to age I ply my daily task. 
And hope, e'en till the lamp of life goes out. 



JOANNA BAILLIE. 



Joanna Baillie was born in Bothwell, in 
Scotland, of an honourable family, about the 
year 1765. She has spent the greater portion 
of her life at Hampstead, near London, where 
she now resides. When she began to write, 
she tells us in the preface to a volume recently 
published, not one of all the eminent authors 
of modern times was known, and Miss Seward 
and Mr. Hayley were the poets spoken of 
in society. The brightest stars in the poeti- 
cal firmament, with very few exceptions, have 
risen and set since then; the greatest revo- 
lutions in empire and in opinion have taken 
place; but she has lived on as if no echo of 
the upturnings and overthrows which filled 
the world reached the quiet of her home ; the 
freshness of her inspirations untarnished ; 
writing from the fulness of a true heart of 
themes belonging equally to all the ages. 
Personally she is scarcely known in literary 
society ; but from her first appearance as 
an author, no woman has commanded more 
respect and admiration by her works; and 
the most celebrated of her contemporaries 
have vied with each other in doing her 
honour. Scott calls her the Shakspeare of 
her sex. 

-" The wild harp silent hung 



By silver Avon's hcily shore. 

Till twice a hiindrnd years roll'd o'er, 

When SHE, the bold enchantress, came 

Witli fearless hand and heart on flame,— 

From the pale willow snatcli'd the treasure, 

And swept It v^^th a kindred measure. 

Till Avon's swans, while rung the jrrove 

With Montfort's hate and B isil's love, 

Awakeninji at the inspirinp strain 

Deein'd their own Shakspeare lived again !" 

The most remarkable of her works are her 
" Plays of the Passions," a series in which 
each passion is made the subject of a tragedy 
and a comedy. In the comedies she failed 
completely; they are pointless tales in dia- 
logue. Her tragedies, however, have great 
I merit, though possessing a singular quality 
for works of such an aim, in being without the 
earnestness and abruptness of actual and pow- 
erful feeling. By refinement and elaboration 
she makes the passions sentiments. She fears 



to distract attention by multiplying incidents ; 
her catastrophes are approached by the most 
gentle gradations ; her dramas are therefore 
slow in action and deficient in interest. Her 
characters possess little individuality; they 
are mere generalizations of intellectual attri- 
butes, theories personified. The very system 
of her plays has been the subject of critical 
censure. The chief object of every dramatic 
work is to please and interest, and this object 
may be arrived at as well by situation as by 
character. Character distinguishes one per- 
son from another, while by passion nearly all 
men are alike. A controlling passion perverts 
character, rather than developes it; and it is 
therefore in vain to attempt the delineation of 
a character by unfolding the progress of a 
passion. It has been well observed too, that 
unity of passion is impossible, since to give a 
just relief and energy to any particular pas- 
sion, it should be presented in opposition to 
one of a different sort, so as to produce a pow- 
erful conflict in the heart. 

In dignity and purity of style. Miss Baillie 
has not been surpassed by any of the poets of 
her sex. Her dialogue is formed on the 
Shaksperean model, and she has succeeded 
perhaps better than any other dramatist in 
imitating the manner of the greatest poet of 
the world. 

" De Montfort" we believe is the only one 
of Miss Baillie's tragedies which has been 
successfully presented in the theatres. It was 
performed in London by John Kemble, and 
in New York and Philadelphia by Edmund 
Kean ; but no actors of inferior genius have 
ventured to attempt it, and it M'ill probably 
never again be brought upon the stage. 

Besides her plays Miss Baillie has written 
"A View of the General Tenor of the New 
Testament regarding the Nature and Dignity 
of Jesus Christ," "Metrical Legends of Emi- 
nent Characters," "Fugitive Verses," and 
some less important publications. In 1827 
she gave the world a new volume of " Plays 
on the Passions," and in 1842 Moxon pub- 
lished her " Fugitive Verses." 

40 



JOANNA BAILLIE. 



41 



BIRTHDAY LINES TO AGNES BAILLIE. 

Dear Agnes, gleam'J with joy and dash'd with 

tears, 
O'er us have glided ahnost sixty years 
Since we on Bothwell's bonny braes were seen. 
By those whose eyes long closed in death have been, 
Two tiny imps, who scarcely stoop'd to gather 
The slender hair-bell on the purple heather ; 
No taller than the foxglove's spiky stem, 
That dew of morning studs with silvery gem. 
Then every butterfly that cross'd our view 
With joyful shout was greeted as it flew. 
And moth and lady-bird and beetle bright 
In sheeny gold were each a wondrous sight 
Then as we paddled barefoot, side by side. 
Among the sunny shallows of the Clyde, 
Minnows or spotted paur with twinkling fin, 
Swimming in mazzy rings the pool within, 
A thrill of gladness through our bosom sent. 
Seen in the power of early wonderment. • . . 

'T was thou who woo'dst me first to look 

Upon the page of printed book. 

That thing by me abhorred, and with address 

Didst win me from my thoughtless idleness, 

When all too old become wiui bootless haste 

In fitful sports the precious time to waste. 

Thy love of tale and story was the stroke 

At which my dormant fancy fiist awoke. 

And ghosts and witches in my busy brain 

Arose in sombre show, a motley train. 

This new-found path attempting, proud was I, 

Lurking approval on thy face to spy. 

Or hear thee say, as grew thy roused attention, 

" What ! is this story all thine own invention !" 

Then, as advancing through this mortal span. 
Our intercourse with the mix'd world began, 
Thy fairer fice and sprightlier courtesy, 
(A truth that from my youthful vanity 
Lay not concealed) did for the sisters twain. 
Where'er we went, the greater favour gain ; 
While, but for thee, vex'd with its tossing tide, 
I from the busy world had shrunk aside. 
And how in later years, with better grace 
Thou help'st me still to hold a welcome place 
With those whom nearer neighbourhood has made 
The friendly cheerei's of our evening shade. 

With thee my humours, whether grave or gay, 

Or gracious or untoward, have their way. 

Silent, if dull — O precious privilege ! 

I sit by thee ; or if, cull'd from the page 

Of some huge, ponderous tome which, but thyself. 

None e'er had taken from its dusty shelf, 

Thou read me curious passages to speed 

The winter night, I take but little heed 

And thankless sa.j, "I cannot listen now," 

'Tis no offonce ; albeit, much do I owe 

To these, thy nightly offerings of affection. 

Drawn from thy ready talent for selection ; 

For still it seem'd in thee a natural gift 

The letter'd grain from letter'd chalT to sift. 

By daily use and circumstance endear'd, 
Things are of value now that once appear'd 



Of no account, and without notice past. 
Which o'er dull life a simple cheering cast ; 
To hear thy morning steps the stair descending. 
Thy voice with other sounds domestic blending ; 
After each stated nightly absence, met 
To see thee by the morning table set. 
Pouring from smoky spout the amber stream 
Which sends from saucercd cup its fragrant steam ; 
To see thee cheerly on the threshold stand, 
On summer morn, with trowel in thy hand 
For garden-work prepared ; in winter's gloom 
From thy cold noon-day walk to see thee conie, 
In furry garment lapt, with spatter'd feet, 
And by the fire resume thy wonted seat; [tlirown 
Ay, even o'er things like these, soothed age has 
A sober charm they did not always own. 
As winter hoar-frost makes minutest spray 
Of bush or hedge-weed sparkle to the day. 
In magnitude and beauty, which bereaved 
Of such investnient, eye had ne'er perceived. 



TO A CHILD. 

Whose imp art thou, with dimpled cheek, 

And curly pate, and merry eye. 
And arm and shoulder round and sleek. 

And soft and fair? — thou urchin sly ! 

What boots it who with sweet caresses 
First called thee his, — or squire or hind 1 

Since thou in every wight that passes. 
Dost now a friendly playmate find. 

Thy downcast glances, grave, but cunning, 

As fringed eyelids rise and fall ; 
Thy shyness, swiftly from me running, 

Is infantine coquetry all. 

But far a field thou hast not flown ; 

With mocks, and threats, half-lisp'd, half-spoken, 
I feel tlice pulling at my gown. 

Of right good will thy simple token. 

And thou must laugh and wrestle too, 
A mimic warfare with me waging; 

To make, as wily lovers do. 

Thy after kindness more engaging. 

The wilding rose, sweet as thyself. 

And new-cropt daisies are thy treasure : 

I'd gladly part with worldly pelf 

To taste again thy youthful pleasure. 

But yet, for all thy merry look. 

Thy frisks and wiles, the time is coming 

When thou shalt sit in cheerless nook. 
The weary spell or horn-book thumbing. 

Well ; let it he ! — through weal and wo. 
Thou know'st not now thy future range ; 

Life is a motley, shifting show. 

And thou a thing of hope and change. 
d2 



42 



JOANNA BAILLIE. 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

Is there a man, that, from some lofty steep, 

Views in his wide survey the boundless deep, 

Wlien its vast waters, lined with sun and shade, 

Wave beyond wave, in serried distance fade 

To the pale sky ; — or views it, dimly seen. 

The shifting screens of drifted mist between, 

As tiie huge cloud dilates its sable form, 

When grandly curtain'd by the ajjproaching storm, 

Who feels not his awed soul with wonder rise 

To Him whose power created sea and skies, 

Mountains and deserts, giving to the sight 

The wonders of the day and of the night? 

But let some fleet be seen in warlike pride. 

Whose stately ships the restless billows ride. 

While each, with lofty masts and brightening sheen 

Of fair spread sails, moves like a vested queen ; — 

Or rather, be some distant bark, astray. 

Seen like a pilgrim on his lonely way, 

Holding its steady course from port and shore, 

A form distinct, a speck, and seen no more, — 

How doth the pride, the sympathy, the flame. 

Of human feeling stir his thrilling frame 1 

"O Thou ! whose mandate dust inert obey'd. 

What is this creature man whom thou hast made]" 

On Palos' shore, whose crowded strand 

Bore priests and nobles of the land. 

And rustic hinds and townsmen trim, 

And harness'd soldiers stern and grim, 

And lowly maids and dames of pride, 

And infants by their mother's side, — 

The boldest seaman stood that e'er 

Did bark or ship through tempest steer ; 

And wise as bold, and good as wise; 

The magnet of a thousand eyes. 

That, on his form and features cast, 

His noble mien and simple guise. 

In wonder seem'd to look their last. 

A form which conscious worth is gracing, 

A face where hope, the lines effacing 

Of thought and care, bestow'd, in truth. 

To the quick eyes' imperfect tracing. 

The look and air of youth. 

Who, in his lofty gait, and" high 
Expression of the enlighten'd eye. 
Had recognised, in that bright hour, 
The disappointed suppliant of dull power, 
Who had in vain of states and kings desired 
The pittance for his vast emprise required 1 — 
The patient sage, who, by his lamp's faint light. 
O'er chart and map spent the long silent night 1 — 
The man who meekly fortune's butfets bore. 
Trusting in One alone, whom heaven and earth 
adore ! 

Another world is in his mind, 

Peopled with creatures of his kind, 

With hearts to feel, with minds to soar, 

Thoughts to consider and explore ; 

Souls who might find, from trespass shriven. 

Virtue on earth and joy in heaven. 

" That power divine, whom storms obey," 

(Whisper'd his heart,) a leading star. 



Will guide him on his blessed way ; 
Brothers to join by fate divided far. 
Vain thoughts ! which heaven doth but ordain 
In part to be, the rest, alas ! how vain ! 

But hath there lived of mortal mould. 

Whose fortunes with his thoughts could hold 

An even race ! Earth's greatest son 

That e'er earn'd fame, or empire won. 

Hath but fulfiH'd, within a narrow scope, 

A stinted portion of his ample hope. 

With heavy sigh and look depress'd, 

The greatest men will sometimes hear 

The story of their acts address'd 

To the young stranger's wondering ear. 

And check the half-swoln tear. 

Is it or modesty or pride 

Which may not open praise abide ? 

No ; read his inward thoughts : they IpU, 

His deeds of fame he prizes well. 

But ah ! they in his fancy stand, 

As relics of a blighted band, 

Who, lost to man's approving sight, 

Have perish'd in the gloom of night. 

Ere yet the glorious light of day 

Had glitter'd on their bright array. 

His mightiest feat had once another, 

Of high imagination born, — 

A loftier and a noble brother. 

From dear existence torn ; 

And she, for those who are not, steeps 

Her soul in wo, — like Rachel, weeps. 



PATRIOTISM AND FREEDOM. 

Insf.xsibi-e to high heroic deeds, 

Is there a spirit cloth'd in mortal weeds. 

Who at the patriot's moving story, 
Devoted to his country's good. 

Devoted to his country's glory. 
Shedding for freemen's rights his generous blood, — 

Listeneth not with deep heaved sigh, 

Quivering nerve, and glistening eye. 
Feeling within a spark of heavenly flame. 
That with the hero's worth may humble kindred 
claim ? 

If such there be, still let him plod 
On the dull foggy paths of care. 

Nor raise his eyes from the dank sod 
To view creation fair : 

What boots to him the wondrous works of God 1 
His soul with brutal things hath ta'en its earthly lair. 

Oh ! who so base as not to feel 

The pride of freedom once enjoy'd. 

Though hostile gold or hostile steel 
Have long that bliss destroy'd 1 
The meanest drudge will sometimes vaunt 

Of independent sires, who bore 

Names known to fome in days of yore, 
Spite of the smiling stranger's taunt; 

But recent freedom lost — what heart 

Can bear the humbling thought — the quickening, 
maddening smart] 



JOANNA BAILLIE. 



43 



FROM THE "TRAVELLER BY NIGHT. 

— Still more pleased, through murky air, 
He spies the distant bonfire's glare ; 
And, nearer to the spot advancing, 
Black imps and goblins round it dancing; 
And nearer still, distinctly traces 
The featured disks of happy faces, 
Grinning and roaring in their glory, 
Like Bacchants wild of ancient story, 
, And making murgeons to the flame, 
As it were playmate in the game. 
Full well, I trow, could modern stage 
Such acting for the nonce engage, 
A crowded audience every night 
Would press to see the jovial sight; 
And this, from cost and squeezing free, 
November's nightly travellers see. 

Through village, lane, or hamlet going, 

The light from cottage window, showing 

Its inmates at their evening fare. 

By rousing fire, where earthenware 

With pewter trenchers, on the shelf, 

Give some display of worldly pelf, 

Is transient vision to the eye 

Of him our hasty passer by ; 

Yet much of pleasing import tells. 

And cherish'd in his fancy dwells. 

Where simple innocence and mirth 

Encircle still the cottage hearth. 

Across the road a fiery glare 

Uoth now the blacksmith's forge declare. 

Where furnace-blast, and measured din 

Of heavy hammers, and within 

The brawny mates their labour plying. 

From heated bar the red sparks flying. 

Some idle neighbours standing by 

With open mouth and dazzled eye : 

The rough and sooty walls with store 

Of chains and horse-shoes studded o'er, 

And rusty blades and bars between. 

All momently are heard and seen. . . . 

Yet this short scene of noisy coil 

But serves our traveller as a foil, 

Enhancing what succeeds, and lending 

A charm to pensive quiet, sending 

To home and friends, left far behind. 

The kindliest musings of his mind ; 

Or, should they stray to thoughts of pain, 

A dimness o'er the haggard train 

A mood and hour like this will throw, 

As vex'd and burden'd spirits know. 

Night, loneliness, and motion are 

Agents of power to distance care ; 

To distance, not discard ; for then 

Withdrawn from busy haunts of men. 

Necessity to act suspended. 

The present, past, and future blended. 

Like figures of a mazy dance, 

Weave round the soul a dreamy trance, 

Till jolting stone of turnpike gate 

Arouse him from the soothing state. 



CONSTANCY. 

With tlie rough blast heaves the billow, 
In the light air waves the willow, 
Every thing of moving kind 
Varies with the veering wind ; 
What have I to do with thee. 
Dull, urijoyous constancy 1 

After fretted, pouting sorrow, 
Sweet will be thy smile to-morrow ; 
Changing still, each passing thing 
Fairest is upon the wing : 
What have I to do with thee. 
Dull, unjoyous constancy 1 

Song of love, and satire witty, 
Sprightly glee and doleful ditty ; 
Every mood and every lay. 
Welcome all, but do not stay ; 
For what have I to do with thee, 
Dull, unjoyous constancy ! 



SONG. 



The morning air plays on my face, 

And through the gray mist peering 
The soften'd sun I sweetly trace, 

Wood, muir, and mountain cheering. 
Larks aloft are singing, 
Hares from covert springing. 
And o'er the fen the wild-duck brood 
Their early way are winging. 

Bright every dewy hawthorn shines, 

Sweet every herb is growing. 
To him whose willing heart inclines 
The way that he is going. 

Clearly do I see now 
What will shortly be now ; 
I'm patting at her door poor Tray, 

Who fawns and welcomes me now. 

How slowly moves the rising latch ! 

How quick my heart is beating ! 
That worldly dame is on the watch 
To frown upon our meeting. 

Fly ! why should I mind her. 
See who stands behind her. 
Whose eye upon her traveller looks 

The sweeter and the kinder. 

Oh every bounding step I take, 

Each hour the clock is telling, 
Bears me o'er mountain, bourn, and brake 
Still nearer to her dwelling. 

Day is shining brighter, 
Limbs are moving lighter, 
While every thought to Nora's love. 

But binds my love the tighter. 



ROBERT BLOOMFIELD. 



Robert Bloomfield was born of parents 
in humble circumstances, at Honington, in 
Suffolk, on the third of December, 1766. His 
mother, being left a widow, became the vil- 
lage school-mistress, and gave him the only 
instruction he ever received. At an early age 
he was sent to London to learn of an elder 
brother the business of shoe-making. In his 
eighteenth year he made his first essay in 
poetry. It was in a garret, amid the hammer- 
ing of some half dozen fellow-workmen, that 
he composed The Farmer's Boy, which, for 
minute and graphic description, has scarcely 
been surpassed by any poet who has written 
in the English language. It was shown to 
several literary men, but the rude hand- 
writing, and the personal appearance of the 
author, probably prevented its being properly 
examined, until it was sent to Capel Lufft, 
who read it, and by his recommendation in- 



I duced Messrs. Verner and Hood to publish 
I it. Its success was immediate and very great, 
■ nearly forty thousand copies having been sold 
during the lifetime of the author. After the 
appearance of The Farmer's Boy, Bloomfield 
devoted much of his time to literature, and 
published several volumes of poems, none of 
which, however, equalled his first production. 
The idea of The Farmer's Boy was probably 
derived from Thomson's Seasons, though, as 
Mr. LoFFT remarks, " There is no other affi- 
nity between the two than flowing numbers, 
feeling piety, poetic imagery and animation, 
and a true sense of the natural and pathetic." 
Mr. Bloomfield was of a generous and affec- 
tionate nature, and, notwithstanding the pro- 
fits from his poems, he was always poor. 
He died at Sheflord, in Bedfordshire, in 
August, 1823, in the fifty-seventh year of his 
age. 



THE BIRD-BOY. 

Far weightier cares aiul wider scenes expand ; 
What devjistation marks the new-sown land ! 
"From hungry woodland foes go, Giles, and guard 
The rising wheat; insure its great reward: 
A future sustenance, a summer's pride, 
Demand thy vigilance : then be it tried : 
Exert thy voice, and wield thy shotless gtm : 
Go, tarry there from morn till setting sun." 

Keen blows the blast, or ceaseless rain descends ; 
The half-stript hedge a sorry shelter lends. 
Oh for a hovel, e'er so small or low. 
Whose roof, repelling winds and early snow, 
Might bring home's comforts fresh before his eyes'. 
No sooner thought, than see the structure rise, 
In some sequester'd nook, embank'd around, 
Sod for its walls, and straw in burdens bound : 
Dried fuel hoarded in liis richest store, 
And circling smoke obscures his little door. 
Whence creeping forth, to duty's call be yields, 
And strolls the Crusoe of the lonely fields. 
On whitethorns towering, and the leafless rose, 
A frost-nipt feast in bright vermilion glows : 
Where clustering sloes in glossy order rise. 
He crops the loaded branch ; a cumbrous prize ; 
And o'er the flame the sputtering fruit he rests, 
Placing green sods to scat his coming guests; 
His guests by promise; playmates young and gay; 
But ah ! fresh pastimes lure their steps away ! 
He sweeps his hearth, and homeward looks in vain, 
Till feeling disappointment's cruel pain, 
44 



His fairy revels are exchanged for rage, 
His banquet marr'd, grown dull his hermitage. 
The field becomes riis prison, till on high 
Benighted birds to shades and coverts fly. 
Midst air, heallh, daylight, can he prisoner be 1 
If fields are prisons, where is liberty ] 
Here still she dwells, and here her votaries stroll; 
But disappointed hope untunes the soul; 
Restraints unfelt whilst hours of rapture flow, 
When troubles press, to chains and barriers grow. 
Look, then, from trivial up to greater woes; 
From the poor bird-boy with his roasted sloes, 
To where the dungeou'd mourner heaves the sigh; 
Where not one cheering sunbeam meets his eye. 
Though ineffectual pity thine may be. 
No wealth, no power, to set the captive free; 
Though only to thy ravish'd sight is given 
The radiant path that Howard trod to Heaven ; 
Thy slights can make the wretched more forlorn, 
And deeper drive affliction's barbed thorn. 
Say not, " I'll come and cheer thy gloomy cell 
With news of dearest friends ; how good, how well : 
I'll be a joyful herald to thine heart:" 
Then fail, and play t!ie worthless trifier's part, 
To sip flat pleasures from thy glass's brim. 
And waste the precious hour that's due to him. 
In mercy spare the base, unmanly blow : 
Where can he turn, to whom complain of you 1 
Back to past joys in vain his thoughts may stray, 
Trace and retrace the beaten, worn-out way, 
The rankling injury will pierce his breast, 
And curses on thee break his midnight rest. 



ROBERT BLOOMFIELD. 



45 



ADDRESS TO HIS NATIVE VALE. 

Ox thy calm joys with what delight I dream 
Thou dear green valley of my native stream ! 
Fancy o'er thee still waves the enchanting wand, 
And every nook of thine is fairy land, 
And ever will be, though the axe should smite 
In gain's rude service, and in pity's spite. 
Thy clustering alders, and at length invade 
The last, last poplars that compose thy shade : 
Thy stream shall then in native freedom stray, 
And undermine the willows in its way; 
These, nearly worthless, may survive this storm, 
This scythe of desolation, call'd " Reform." 
No army pass'd that way 1 yet are they fled. 
The boughs that, when a schoolboy, screen'J my 

head : 
I hate the murderous axe ; estranging more 
The winding vale from what it was of yore, 
Than e'en mortality in all its rage. 
And all the change of faces in an age. 
« Warmth," will they term it, that I speak so freel 
They strip thy shades, — thy shades so dear to me ! 



HARVEST-HOME. 

Now, ere sweet summer bids its long adieu. 
And winds blow keen where late the blossom grew. 
The bustling day and jovial night must come. 
The long-accustom'd feast of harvest-home. 
No blood-stain'd victory, in story bright. 
Can give the philosophic mind delight ; 
No triumph please while rage and death destroy; 
Reflection sickens at the monstrous joy. 
And where the joy, if rightly understood, 
Like cheerful praise for universal good ! 
The soul nor check nor doulrtful anguish knows. 
But free and pure the grateful current flows. 
Behold the sound oak table's massy frame 
Bestride the kitchen floor ! the careful dame 
And generous host invite their friends around, 
W^hile all that clear'd the crop, or till'd the ground. 
Are guests by right of custom: — old and young; 
And many a neighbouring yeoman join the throng, 
W^ith artisans that lent their dexterous aid. 
When o'er each field the flaming sunbeams play'd. 

Yet plenty reigns, and from her boundless hoard, 
Though not one jelly trembles on the board. 
Supplies the feast with all that sense can crave ; 
With all that made our great forefathers brave, 
Ere the cloy'd palate countless flavours tried. 
And cooks had nature's judgment set aside. 
With thanks to Heaven, and tales of rustic lore. 
The mansion echoes when the banquet's o'er ; 
A wider circle spreads, and smiles abound 
As quick the frothing horn performs its round ; 
Care's mortal foe ; that sprightly joys imparts 
To cheer the frame and elevate their hearts. 



Here, fresh and brown, the hazel's produce lies 
In tempting heaps, and peals of laughter rise. 
And crackling music, with the frequent song, 
Unheeded bear the midnight hour along. 

Here once a year distinction lowers its crest, 
The master, servant, and the merry guest. 
Are equal all; and round the hap])y ring 
The reaper's eyes exulting glances fling. 
And, warm'd with gratitude, he quits his place, 
With sun-burnt hands and ale-enliven'd face, 
Refills the jug his honour'd host to tend. 
To serve at once the master and the friend ; 
Proud thus to meet his smiles, to share his tale. 
His nuts, his conversation, and his ale. 



THE WIDOW TO HER HOUR-GLASS. 

Come, friend, I'll turn thee up again: 

Companion of the lonely hour ! 
Spring thirty times hath fed with rain 

And clothed with leaves my humble bower, 
Since thou hast stood 
In frame of wood. 
On chest or window by my side : 

At every birth still thou wert near, 

Still spoke thine admonitions clear, — 
And, when my husband died. 

I've often watch'd thy streaming sand. 
And seen the growing mountain rise, 

And often found life's hopes to stand 
On props as weak in wisdom's eyes : 

Its conic crown 
^ Still sliding down. 

Again heap'd up, then down again ; 
The sand above more hollow grew. 
Like days and years still filtering through. 

And mingling joy and pain. 

While thus I spin and sometimes sing, 
(For now and then my heart will glow,) 

Thou measurest Time's expanding wing; 
By thee the noontide hour I know: 
Though silent thou. 
Still shall thou flow, 

And jog along thy destined way: 
But when I glean the sultry fields. 
When earth her yellow harvest yields. 

Thou gett'st a holiday. 

Steady as truth, on either end 
Thy daily task performing well, 

Thou 'rt meditation's constant friend. 
And strik'st the heart without a bell: 
Come, lovely May I 
Thy lengthen'd day 

Shall gild once more my native plain ; 

Curl inward here, sweet woodbine flower: 
» Companion of the lonely hour, 

I'll turn thee up again." 



JOHN H. FRERE. 



The Right Honourable John Hookham 
Frere, of Roydon Hall in Norfolk, was born 
on the twenty-fourth of May, 17(J9. He is a 
brother of Sergeant Frere, and of Bartho- 
lomew Frere, sometime minister in Spain 
and at Constantinople. He was Under-secre- 
tary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1799 ; En- 
voy at Lisbon in 1800, and at Madrid in 1802. 
He was minister to Spain in 1808, and in the 
following year, the Castilian title of Marques 
de la Union was conferred on him by the 
Junta, which the Prince Regent permitted 
him to accept. During his residence in Spain, 
his rash and arrogant interference with the 
English generals greatly injured his reputa- 
tion. His dictation to Sir John Moore was 
profoundly absurd; and Sir Arthur Wei-- 
LESLEY found him so impracticable that he 
requested he might be recalled. In 1816 
Mr. Frere married the Dowager Countess of 
Errol. For some years past he has resided in 
Malta. 

In literature, Mr. Frere's name is assoefated 
with some of the most brilliant and successful 
works of his times. He was a contributor to 
the "Etonian;" he assisted in the composi- 
tion of some of the most admirable pieces in 
the " Anti- Jacobin ;" and was one of the 
founders of the " Quarterly Review." But 
for a long time, he seems to have valued the 
pleasures of study beyond the praise of au- 



thorship.* The work from which the extracts 
in this collection are made, may be regarded 
as the immediate original of "Don Juan." 
Byron, however, was anxious to have it 
thought that he had derived his models from 
a remoter source; and translated the"Mor- 
gante Maggiore" chiefly, it would seem, for 
the purpose of telling the world that Frere 
as well as himself was but a reviver of the 
old manner of Berni and Pulci. Bvron says 
of PuLci, in the preface to that translation, "He 
is no less the founder of a new style of poetry 
very lately sprung up in England ; I allude 
to that of the ingenious Whistlecraft." 
But the merits of the two moderns are quite 
distinct. Frere's excellence consists, almost 
exclusively, in manner ; which presents such 
.a combination of oddity with grace, of affec- 
tation with perfect good taste, as makes a 
very curious and agreeable study for the cul- 
tivated reader. Byron could not maintain 
the tone of this delicate and peculiar style; 
instead of interfusing the grave with the hu- 
morous, or keeping skilfully upon the boun- 
dary line between them, his method consists 
rather in rapid transitions from the extremes 
of either. But the praise of this mere artist- 
merit may well be foregone, in view of the 
rare material, the fancy, thought, passion, 
pathos, and all that can glorify poetry, with 
which Byron's pieces are crowded. 



PROSPECTUS AND SPECIMEN ' 

OF AN INTENDED NATIONAL WORK, BY WILLIAM 
AND ROBERT WHISTLECRAFT, OF STOW-MARKET, 
IN SUFFOLK, HARNESS AND COLLAR-MAKERS : 
INTENDED TO COMPRISE THE MOST INTERESTING 
PARTICULARS RELATING TO KING ARTHUR AND 
HIS ROUND TABLE. 



THE PROEM. 

I've often vvish'd that I could write a book, 
Such as all English people might peruse; 

I never should regret the pains it took, 

That's just the sort of fame that I should chuse : 

To sail about the world like Captain Cook, 
I'd sling a cot up for my favourite Muse, 

And we 'd take verses out to Demarara, 

To New South Wales, and up to Niagara. 
46 



Poets consume exciseable commodities. 

They raise the nation's spirit when victorious, 

They drive an export trade in whims and oddities, 
Making our commerce and revenue glorious ; 

As an industrious and pains-taking body 'tis 
That poets should be reckon'd meritorious; 

And therefore I submissively propose 

To erect one board for verse and one for prose. 

* Wlien very younsr Frere translated the old Saxon 
poem on tlie victory of Athelstan at Brunnanhureli. Sir 
James Mackintosh thus alludes to it : " A translition, 
made by a school-boy in the eighteenth century, of this 
Saxon poem ofthe tenth century, into the Enslish of the 
fourteenth century, is a double imitation, unmatched, per- 
haps, in literary history, in which the writer srave an 
earnest of that faculty of catchins the peculi.-.r senius 
and preserving the characteristic manner of his original, 
which, though the specimens of it be too few, [liaces ?'Jin 
alone among English tranalators." — Jilackintosh's Eng- 
land, vol. i. p. 52. 



JOHN H. FRERE. 



47 



Princes protecting sciences and art 

I've often seen, in copper-plate and print; 

I never saw them elsewhere, for my part. 

And therefore I conclude there's nothing in't; 

But everybody knows the Regent's heart ; 
I trust he won't reject a well-meant hint; 

Each board to have twelve members, with a seat 

To bring them in per ann. five hundred neat : — 

From princes I descend to the nobility : 

In former times all persons of high stations, 

Lords, baronets, and persons of gentility, 
Paid twenty guineas for the dedications : 

This practice was attended with utility ; 
The patrons lived to future generations, 

The poets lived by their industrious earning, — 

So men alive and dead could live by learning. 

Then, twenty guineas was a little fortune; [mend: 
Now, we must starve unless the times should 

Our poets now-a-days are deem'd importune 
If their addresses are diffusely penn'd ; 

Most fashionable authors make a short one 
To their own wife, or child, or private friend, 

To show their independence, I suppose ; 

And that may do for gentlemen like those. 

Lastly, the common people I beseech — 

Dear people ! if you think my verses clever, 

Preserve with care your noble parts of speech, 
And take it as a maxim to endeavour 

To talk as your good mothers used to teach. 
And then these lines of mine may last for ever; 

And don't confound the language of the nation 

With long-tail'd words in osity and ution. 

I think that poets (whether Whig or Tory) 
(Whether they go to meeting or to church) 

Should study to promote their country's glory 
With patriotic, diligent research ; 

That children yet unborn may learn the story. 
With grammars, dictionaries, canes, and birch: 

It stands to reason — This was Homer's plan. 

And we must do — Hke him — the best we can. 

Madoc and Marmion, and many more. 

Are out in print, and most of them are sold ; 

Perhaps together they may make a score ; 
Richard the First has had his story told, 

But there were lords and princes long before. 
That had behaved themselves like warriors bold ; 

Among the rest there was the great King Arthur, 

What hero's fame was ever carried farther ? 

King Arthur, and the Knights of his Round Table, 
Were rcckon'd the best king, and bravest lords. 

Of all that flourish'd since the tower of Babel, 
At least of all that history records ; 

Therefore I shall endeavour, if I'm able, 

To paint their fomous actions by my words : 

Heroes exert themselves in hopes of fame. 

And having such a strong decisive claim. 

It grieves me much, that names that were respected 
In former ages, persons of such mark, 

And coinitrymen of onr*!, should lie neglected. 
Just like old portraits lumbering in the dark: 

An error such as this should be corrected, 
And if my Muse can strike a single spark, 



Why then (as poets say) I'll string my lyre ; 
And then I '11 light a great poetic fire ; 

I 'II air them all, and rub down the Round Table, 
And wash the canvas clean, and scour the frames, 

And put a coat of varnish on <he fable, 

And try to puzzle out the dates and names ; 

Then (as I said before) I'll heave my cable. 
And take a pilot, and drop down the Thames — 

— These first eleven stanzas make a proem. 

And now I must sit down and write n)y poem. 



SIR GAWAIN. 

Sir Gawain may be painted in a word — 

He was a perfect loyal cavalier; 
His courteous manners stand upon record, 

A stranger to the very thought of fear. 
The proverb says, As brave as his own sword ; 

And like his weapon was that worthy peer, 
Of admirable temper, clear and bright, 
Polish'd yet keen, though pliant yet upright. 

On every point, in earnest or in jest. 

His judgment, and his prudence, and his wit, 

Were deem'd the very touchstone and the test 
Of what was proper, graceful, just, and fit ; 

A word from him set every thing at rest 
His short decisions never fail'd to hit; 

His silence, his reserve, his inattention, 

Were felt as the severest reprehension : 

His memory was the magazine and hoard. 

Where claims and grievances, from year to year, 

And confidences and complaints were stored, [peer: 
From dame and knight, from damsel, boor, and 

Loved by his friends, and trusted by his lord, 
A generous courtier, secret and sincere. 

Adviser-general to the whole community. 

He served his friend, butwatch'd his opportunity. 

One riddle I could never understand — 

But his success in war was strangely various; 

In executing schemes that others plann'd, 
He seem'd a very Csesar or a Marius ; 

Take his own plans, and place him in command, 
Your prospect of success became precarious : 

His plans were good, but Launcelot succeeded 

And realized them better far than he did. 

His discipline was steadfast and austere, 
Unalterably fix'd, hut calm and kind ; 

Founded on admiration, more than fear. 
It seem'd an emanation from his mind ; 

The coarsest natures that approach'd him near 
Grew courteous for the moment and refined; 

Beneath his eye the poorest, weakest wight 

Felt full of point of honour, like a knight. 

In battle he was fearless to a fault, 

. The foremost in the thickest of the field ; 
His eatrer valour knew no pause nor halt. 

And the red rampant lion in his shield 
Scaled towns and towers, the foremost in assault, 

With ready succour where the battle reel'd : 
At random like a thunderbolt he ran, [man. 

And bore down shields, and pikes, and horse, and 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



William Wordsworth was born at Cock- 
ermouth, in Cumberland, on the seventh of 
April, 1770. With his brother, (the Rev. Dr. 
Wordsworth, author of Greece, Historical 
and Picturesque,) he was sent at an early age 
to the Hawkshead grammar school, in Lan- 
cashire, whence, in his seventeenth year, he 
was removed to St. John's College, Cam- 
bridge. On leaving the university, he made 
the pedestrian tour through France, Switzer- 
land and Italy, commemorated in his De- 
scriptive Sketches in Verse, which, with an 
Epistle to a Young Lady from the Lakes in 
the North of England, were published in 
1793. He was in Paris at the commence- 
ment of the French Revolution, lodging in 
the same house with Brissot, but was driven 
from the city by the Reign of Terror. Re- 
turned to England, he passed a considerable 
time at Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, where he 
became intimately acquainted with Coleridge. 
It was during his residence here that he com- 
pleted the first volume of his Lyrical Ballads, 
which was published in 1798. He soon after 
made a tour through a part of Germany, where 
he was joined by Coleridge, with whom, at 
the end of thirty years, he revisited that coun- 
try. In 1803 he married Mary Hutchinson, 
and settled at Grassmere, a home subsequently 
exchanged for his present beautiful residence at 
Rydal, in Westmoreland. In 1807 he published 
a second volume of the Lyrical Ballads, and in 
1809 a prose work On the Relations of Great 
Britain, Spain and Portugal to each other. 
In 1814 appeared The Excursion, "being a 
portion of The Recluse, a poem," which was 
followed, in 1815, by The White Doe of 
Rylstone; in 1819 by Peter Bell the Wag- 
goner; in 1820 by The River Duddon, a 
series of sonnets, Vaudracour and Julia and 
other pieces, and Ecclesiastical Sketches ; in 
1822 by Memorials of a Tour on the Conti- 
nent, and A Description of the Lakes in the 
North of England; in 1835 by Yarrow Re- 
visited and other Poems; and in 1842 by his 
last volume. Poems chiefly of Early and Late 
Years, including The Borderers, a Tragedy, 
written in 1785. 



Sir Isaac Newton is reported to have said 
that any man of good ability who could have 
paid the same long and undivided attention 
to mathematical pursuits that he had, would 
have wrought out the same results. Probably 
almost any thoughtful and well-educated per- 
son, devoting a long and quiet life to the cul- 
tivation of poetry, would sometimes produce 
passages of sublimity and beauty. Mr. 
Wordsworth has produced very many such; 
but he has written no single great poem, har- 
monious and sustained, unless exceptions be 
found in two or three of his shorter pieces. 
In the beginning of his career, acting upon 
the belief that a man of genius must " shape 
his own road," he affected an originality of 
style. He determined to be simple, and be- 
came puerile; he disdained to owe anything 
to the dignity of his subjects, and often 
selected such as were contemptible. He 
complained that poetry had been written in 
an inflated and unnatural diction, compounded 
of a "certain class of ideas and expressions," 
to the exclusion of all others, and vaunted of 
his courage in setting these aside. But the 
complaint was ill-grounded; there was man- 
nerism enough, inflation enough, in the begin- 
ning of this century, but there was also 
genuine simplicity and tenderness, and inde- 
pendence of feeling and expression. Chaucer 
and Spenser, Shakspeare and Milton, were 
studied as well as Pope ; and Cowper and 
Thomson and Burns had as truly as himself 
written " the real language of men in a state 
of vivid sensation." The principles he osten- 
tatiously avowed were a mere repetition of 
what nearly every poet whose works retain a 
place in English literature had practically 
acknowledged. Sportsmen have a phrase, 
"running the thing into the ground," which 
has been applied to the racing of asses; 
and Mr. Wordsworth, in the Wliite Doe of 
Rylstone, Peter Bell, and other pieces, has 
merely applied the art to simplicity of diction. 
In him mannerism, an obstinate adherence to 
a theory, well nigh ruined a great poet; for 
such he has shown himself to be when 
the divine afflatus has obtained a mastery 

43 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



49 



over the rules by which he has chosen to be 
fettered. The general scope of his poetry is 
shown in the following extract from the con- 
clusion of the first book of The Recluse, intro- 
duced into the preface to The Excursion : 

On man, on nature, and on human life, 
Musing in solitude, I oft perceive 
Fair trains of imagery before me rise, 
Accompanied by feelings of delight. 
Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mix'd ; 
And I am conscious of affecting thoughts 
And dear remembrances, whose presence soothes 
Or elevates the mind, intent to weigh 
The good and evil of our mortal state. 
To these emotions, whencesoe'er they come, 
Whether from breath of outward circumstance, 
Or from the soul — an impulse to lierself, — 
I would give utterance in numerous verse. 
Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love, and hope — 
And melancholy fear subdued by faith; 
Of blessed consolations in distress; 
Of moral strength, and intellectual power; 
Of joy in widest commonalty spread ; 
Of the individual mind that keeps her own 
Inviolate retirement, subject there 
To conscience only, and the law supreme 
Of that Intelligence which governs all ; 
I sing! — " fit audience let me find, though few !" 

So pray'd, more gaining than he ask'd, the bard. 
Holiest of men — Urania, I shall need 
Thy guidance, or a greater muse, if such 
DescemI to earth or dwell in highest heaven ! 
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink 
Deep — and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds 
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil. 
All strength, all terror, single or in bands. 
That ever was put forth in personal form; 
Jehovah — with his thunder and the choir 
Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones — 
I pass them unalarm'd. Not Chaos, not 
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, 
Nor aught of blinder vacancy— scoop'd out 
By help of dreams — can breed such fear and awe 
As fall upon us often when we look 
Into our minds, into the mind of man, 
My haunt, and the main region of my song. 

By words 
Which speak of nothing more than what we are, 
Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep 
Of death, and win the vacant and the vain 
To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims 
How exquisitely the individual mind 
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less 
Of the whole species) to the external world 
Is fitted ; and how exquisitely, too, — 
Theme this but little heard of among men, — 
The external world is fitted to the mind; 
And the creation (by no lower name 
Can it be call'd) which they with blended might 
Accomplish : This is our high argument. 

Such grateful haunts foregoing, if I oft 
Must turn elsewhere — to travel near the tribes 
And fellowships of men, and see ill sights 
Of madding passions mutually inttamed ; 
Must hear humanity in fields and groves 
Pipe solitary anguish; or must hang 
Brooding above the fierce confederate storm 
Of sorrow, barricadoed evermore 
Within the walls of cities ; may these sounds 
Have their authentic comment — that even these 
Hearing, I be not downcast or forlorn ! 
— Descend, prophetic spirit ! that inspirest 
The human soul of universal earth. 
Dreaming on things to come ; and dost possess 
A metropolitan temple in the hearts 
7 



Of mighty poets; upon me bestow 

A gift of genuine insight ; that my song 

With star-like virtue in its place may shine; 

Shedding benignant influence— and secure. 

Itself, from all malevolent effect 

Of those nmtations that extend their sway 

Throughout the nether sphere ! 

It was for a long time the custom to treat 
Wordsworth with unmerited contempt. His 
faults were so conspicuous as to blind men 
to his merits. The fashion is changed, and 
he is now as much overpraised. The stone 
which the builders rejected, has by a few 
been placed at the head of the corner, but it 
cannot reinain there. He has written poetry 
worthy of the greatest bards of all the ages, 
and as wretched verbiage and inanity as any 
with which paper was ever assoiled. 

Mr. Wordsworth has been an eminently 
happy man in his circumstances. Depressed 
by no poverty, worn out with no over-exer- 
tion, and successful in his few efforts of a 
private nature, nothing has disturbed the 
tranquillity of his life. He has realized the 
vision of literary ease and retirement which 
has mocked the ambition of so many men of 
genius. All other poets of high reputation 
have passed considerable portions at least of 
their lives in the current of society, but his days 
have been spent in the beautiful region of his 
home, and the quiet meditation of his works. 

Few men have been more beloved than Mr. 
Wordsworth in private life. Among his in- 
timate friends have been Coleridge, Southey, 
and many of the other eminent men of his 
time. On the death of Southey he was ap 
pointed Poet Laureate, and, at seventy-five, he 
promises to live yet many years to enjoy his 
fame and the honours of his station. 

The selections from Wordsworth in this 
volume are in but few instances complete 
poems. I have chosen rather to give in de- 
tached passages some of his most beautiful 
and sublime thoughts, with enough of the 
characteristic to enable the reader to perceive 
the peculiarities of his style. No one but 
the author of the Lyrical Ballads would have 
written "We are Seven." 

A complete edition of the works of Mr. 
Wordsworth has been published in Philadel- 
phia, under the superintendence of Professor 
Henry Reed, of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, a gentleman to whom he owes much 
of his reputation in America ; and another 
edition was published several years ago in 
New Haven. 



50 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



INSCRIPTION FOR A SEAT IN THE 
GROVES OF COLEORTON. 

Beneath yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound, 
Rugged and high, of Charnwood's forest ground. 
Stand yet — but, stranger ! hidden from thy view — 
The ivied ruins of forlorn Grace Dieu ; 
Erst a religious house, which day and night 
With hymns resounded, and the chanted rite : 
And when those rites had ceased, the spot gave birth 
To honourable men of various worth: 
There, on the margin of a streamlet wild. 
Did Francis Beaumont sport, an eager child ; 
There, under shadow of the neighbouring rocks. 
Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks ; 
Unconscious prelude to heroic themes. 
Heart-breaking tears, and melancholy dreams 
Of slighted love, and scorn, and jealous rage. 
With which his genius shook the buskin'd stage. 
Communities are lost, and empires die, 
And things of holy use unhallow'd lie ; 
They perish; — but the intellect can raise, 
From airy words alone, a pile that ne'er decays. 



A YOUTHFUL POET CONTEMPLATING 
NATURE. 

For the growing youth. 
What soul was his, when from the naked top 
Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun 
Rise up, and bathe the world in light ! He look'd — 
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth 
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay 
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds weretouch'd, 
And in their silent faces could he read 
Unutterable love. Sound needed none, 
Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank 
The spectacle : sensation, soul, and form 
All melted into him; they swallowed up 
His animal being : in them did he live. 
And by them did he live ; they were his life. 
In such access of mind, in such high hour 
Of visitation from the living God, 
Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired. 
No thanks he breathed, he prolfer'd no request; 
Rapt into still communion that transcends 
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, 
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power 
That made him ; it was blessedness and love ! 
A herdsman on the lonely mountain top, 
Such intercourse was his, and in this sort 
Was his existence oftentimes posf:essed. 
Oh then how beautiful, how bright appear'd 
The written promise ! Early had he learned 
To reverence the volume that displays 
The mystery, the life which cannot die; 
But in the mountains did he feel his faith. 
All things, responsive to the writing, there 
Breathed immortality, revolving life, 
And greatness still revolving; infinite; 
There littleness was not; the least of things 
Seem'd infinite ; and then his spirit shaped 
Her prospects, nor did he believe, — he saw. 



What wonder if his being thus became 
Sublime and comprehensive ! Low desires, 
Low thoughts had there no place ; yet was his heart 
Lowly ; for he was meek in gratitude. 
Oft as he call'd those ecstasies to mind, [quired 
And whence they flow'd ; and from them he ac- 
Wisdom, which works through patience; thence he I 
In oft recurring hours of sober thought, [learn'd 
To look on nature with an humble heart, 
Self-question'd where it did not understand, 
And with a superstitious eye of love. 



EVENING IN THE MOUNTAINS. 

Has not the soul, the being of your life, 
Received a shock of awful consciousness, 
In some calm season, when these lofty rocks, 
At night's approach, bring down th' unclouded sky 
To rest upon their circumambient walls; 
A temple framing of dimensions vast. 
And yet not too enormous for the sound 
Of human anthems — choral song, or burst 
Sublime of instrumental harmony. 
To glorify the Eternal ! What if these 
Did never break the stillness that prevails 
Here, if the solemn nightingale be mute, 
And the soft woodlark here did never chant 
Her vespers. Nature fails not to provide 
Impulse and utterance. The whispering air 
Sends inspiration from the shadowy heights. 
And blind recesses of the cavern'd rocks ; 
The little rills and waters numberless. 
Inaudible by daylight, blend their notes 
With the loud streams: and often, at the hour 
When issue forth the first pale stars, is heard, 
Within the circuit of this fabric huge, 
One voice — one solitary raven, flying 
Athwart the concave of the dark-blue dome, 
Unseen, perchance above the power of sight — 
An iron knell ! With echoes from afar, 
Faint, and still fainter. 



SKATING. 

Not seldom from the uproar I retired 
Into a silent bay, or sportively 
Glanced sideways, leaving the tumultuous throng. 
To cross the bright reflection of a star, 
Image that, dying still before me, gleam'd 
Upon the glassy plain : and oftentimes 
When we had given our bodies to the wind. 
And all the shadowy banks on either side 
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still 
The rapid line of motion, then at once 
Have I, reclining back upon my heels, 
Stopp'd sliort ; yet still the solitary clifis 
Wheel'd by me, even as if the earth had roll'd, 
With visible motion, her diurnal round ! 
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train, 
Feebler and feebler; and I stood and watch'd 
Till all was tranquil as a summer sea. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



51 



ON REVISITING THE WYE. 

These beauteous forms, 
Through a long absence, have not been to me 
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye : 
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din 
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, 
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, 
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart ; 
And passing even into my purer mind. 
With tranquil restoration : — feelings, too. 
Of unremembered pleasure : such, perhaps, 
As have no slight or trivial influence 
On that best portion of a good man's life, 
His little, nameless, unremember'd acts 
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, 
To them I may have owed another gift 
Of aspect mare sublime ; that blesses most 
In which the burden of the mystery. 
In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world 
Is lighten'd : — that serene and blessed mood, 
In which the affections gently lead us on — 
Until the breath of this corporeal frame. 
And even the motion of our human blood 
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
In body, and become a living soul ; 
While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy. 
We see into the life of things. If this 
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh ! how oft. 
In darkness, and amid the many shapes 
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir 
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world 
Has hung upon the beatings of my heart — 
How oft, in spirit, have I turn'd to thee, 

silvan Wye ! Thou wanderer through the woods. 
How often has my spirit turn'd to thee ! 

And now with gleams of half-extinguish'd thought, 
With many recognitions dim and faint. 
And somewhat of a sad perplexity, 
The picture of the mind revives again : 
While here I stand, not only with the sense 
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts, 
That in this moment there is life and food 
For future years. And so I dare to hope, [first 
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when 

1 came among these hills ; when like a roe 
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides 
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, 
Wherever nature led : more like a man 
Flying from something that he dreads, than one 
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then 
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days. 

And their glad varied moments all gone by) 
To me was all in all. I cannot paint 
What then I was. The sounding cataract 
Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock, 
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood. 
Their colours and their forms, were then to me 
An appetite ; a feeling and a love 
That had no need of a remoter charm, 
By thought supplied, nor any interest 
Unborrow'd from the eye. That time is past, 
And all its aching joys are now no more, 



And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 

Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other gifts 

Have foUow'd ; for such loss I would believe 

Abundant recompense. For I have learn'd 

To look on nature, not as in the hour 

Of thoughtless youtli, but hearing oftentimes 

The still sad music of humanity. 

Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power 

To soften and subdue. And I have felt 

A passion that disturb'd me with the joy 

Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 

Of something far more deeply interposed, 

Whose dwelling is the light of setting sun, 

And the round ocean, and the living air. 

And the blue sky, and on the mind of man : 

A motion and a spirit, that impels 

All thinking things, all objects and all thought, 

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 

A lover of the meadows and the w^oods, 

And mountains ; and of all that we behold 

From this green earth ; of all the mighty world 

Of eye and ear, both what they half create 

And what perceive ; well-pleased to recognise, 

In nature and the language of the sense. 

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse. 

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 

Of all my moral being. 



CLOUDS AFTER A STORM. 

— A SINGLE step which freed me from the skirts 
Of the blind vapour, open'd to my view 
Glory beyond all glory ever seen 
By waking sense or by the dreaming soul — 
The appearance instantaneously disclosed, 
Was of a mighty city — boldly say 
A wilderness of building, sinking far 
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth 
Far sinking into splendour — without end ! 
Fabric it seem'd of diamond and of gold, 
With alabaster domes and silver spires ; 
And blazing terrace upon terrace high 
Uplifted : here serene pavilions bright 
In avenues disposed ; there towers begirt 
With battlements that on their restless fronts 
Bore stars, illumination of all gems ! 
Oh 'twas an unimaginable sight; [turf. 

Clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks, and emerald 
Clouds of all tincture, rocks and sapphire sky, 
Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed. 
Molten together, and composing thus. 
Each lost in each, that marvellous array 
Of temple, palace, citadel, and huge 
Fantastic pomp of structure without name, 
In fleecy folds voluminous enwrapp'd. 
Right in the midst, where interspace appear'd 
Of open court, an object like a throne 
Beneath a shining canopy of state 
Stood fix'd ; and fix'd resemblances were seen 
To implements of ordinary use. 
But vast in size, in substance glorified ; 
Such as by Hebrew prophets were beheld 
In vision — forms uncouth of mightiest power. 
For admiration and mysterious awe ! 



52 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



MAN NEVER TO BE SCORNED. 

'Tis nature's law 
That none, the meanest of created things, 
Of forms created the most vile and brute, 
The dullest or most noxious, should exist 
Divorced from good — a spirit and pulse of good, 
A life and soul, to every mode of being 
Inseparably link'd. Then be assured 
That least of all can aught — that ever own'd 
The heaven-regarding eye and front sublime 
Which man is born to — sink, howe'er depress'd. 
So lowr as to be scorn'd without a sin ; 
Without offence to God cast out of view; 
Like the dry remnant of a garden flower 
Whose seeds are shed, or as an implement 
Worn out and worthless. 



OBEDIENCE AND HUMILITY. 

Glorious is the blending 

Of light affections climbing or descending 

Along a scale of light and life, with cares 

Alternate; carrying holy thoughts and prayers 

Up to the sovereign seat of the Most High ; 

Descending to the worm in charity ; 

Like those good angels whom a dream of night 

Gave, in the field of Luz, to Jacob's sight; 

All, while he slept, treading the pendant stairs 

Earthward or heavenward, radiant messengers, 

That, with a perfect will in one accord 

Of strict obedience, served the Almighty Lord ; 

And with untired humility forbore 

To speed their errand by the wings they wore. 



A DESERTED WIFE. 

Evermore 
Her eyelids droop'd, her eyes were downward cast, 
And, when she at her table gave me food. 
She did not look at me ! Her voice was low, 
Her body was subdued. In every act 
Pertaining to her house affairs, appear'd 
The careless stillness of a thinking mind 
Self-occupied ; to which all outward things 
Are like an idle matter. Still she sigh'd. 
But yet no motion of the breast was seen. 
No heaving of the heart. While by the fire 
We sate together, sighs came on my ear, 
I knew not how, and hardly whence they came. 

I return'd. 

And took my rounds along this road again 
Ere on its sunny bank the primrose flower 
Peep'd forth, to give an earnest of the spring. 
I found her sad and drooping ; she had learn'd 
No tidings of her husband ; if he lived. 
She knew not that he lived ; if he were dead. 
She knew not he was dead. She seem'd the same 
In person and appearance ; but her house 
Bespake a sleepy hand of negligence. 

Her infant babe 

Had from its mother caught the trick of grief, 
And sigh'd among its playthings ! 



CHATTERTON. 

I TnouGHT of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, 
The sleepless soul that perish'd in his pride ; 

Of him who walk'd in glory and in joy 
Following his plough, along the mountain side ; 
By our own spirits we are deified ; 
We poets in our youth begin in gladness. 
But thereof come in the end despondency and 
madness. 



PICTURE OF A BEGGAR. 

The aged man 
Had placed his staff across the broad, smooth stone 
That overlays the pile ; and from a bag 
All white with flour, the dole of village dames. 
He drew his scraps and fragments, one by one. 
And scann'd them with a fix'd and serious look 
Of idle computation. In the sun, 
Upon the second step of that small pile. 
Surrounded by these wild, unpeopled hills, 
He sat, and ate his food in solitude ; 
And ever, scatter'd from his palsied hand, 
That, still attempting to prevent the waste, 
Was baffled still, the crumbs in little showers 
Fell on the ground; and the small mountain birds, 
Not venturing yet to pick their destined meal, 
Approach'd within the length of half his staff. 



A LOVER. 

Arabian fiction never fill'd the world 
With half the wonders that were wrought for him. 
Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring; 
Life turn'd the meanest of her implements 
Before his eyes to price above all gold ; 
The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine; 
Her chamber window did surpass in glorv 
The portal of the dawn ; all paradise 
Could, by the simple opening of a door. 
Let itself in upon him ; pathways, walks, 
Swarm'd with enchantment, till his spirit sank, 
Surcharged, within him — overblest to move 
Beneath a sun that walks a weary world 
To its dull round of ordinary cares ; 
A man too happy for mortality. 



LONGING FOR REUNION WITH THE 
DEAD. 

Fun oft the innocent sufferer sees 

Too clearly ; feels too vividly ; and longs 

To realize the vision with intense 

And over-constant yearning; there — there lies 

The excess by which the balance is destroy'd. 

Too, too contracted are these walls of flesh, 

This vital warmth too cold, these visual orbs, 

Though inconceivably endow'd, too dim, 

For any passion of the soul that leads 

To ecstasy ; and, all the crooked paths 

Of time and change disdaining, takes its course 

Along the line of limitless desires. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



53 



A CHILD WITH A SHELL. 

I HAVE seen 
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract 
Of inland ground, applying to his ear 
The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd shell ; 
To which, in silence hush'd, his very soul 
Listen'd intensely ! and his countenance soon 
Brighten'd with joy ; for murmurings from within 
Were heard, sonorous cadences! whereby, 
To his belief, the monitor express'd 
Mysterious union with its native sea. 
Even such a shell the universe itself 
Is to the ear of faith. 



APOSTROPHE TO THE DEITY. 

Tkou, dread source 

Prime, self-existing cause and end of all 

That in the scale of being fill their place ; 

Above our human region, or below, 

Set and sustain'd; — Thou, who didst wrap the 

cloud 
Of infancy around us, that Thyself, 
Therein with our simplicity a while 
Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturb'd ; 
Who from the anarchy of dreaming sleep. 
Or from its deathlike void, with punctual care, 
And touch as gentle as the morning light, 
Restorest us, daily, to the powers of sense, 
And reason's steadfast rule — Thou, Thou alone 
Art everlasting, and the bless'd spirits, 
Which thou includest, as the sea her waves : 
For adoration thou endurest ; endure 
For consciousness the motions of thy will ; 
For apprehension those transcendent truths 
Of the pure intellect, that stand as laws 
(Submission constituting strength and power) 
Even to Thy Being's infinite majesty ! 
This universe shall pass away — a work 
Glorious! because the shadow of thy might, 
A step, or link, for intercourse with thee. 
Ah ! if the time must come, in which my feet 
No more shall stray where meditation leads. 
By flowing stream, through wood, or craggy wild. 
Loved haunts like these ; the unimprison'd mind 
May yet have scope to range among her own, 
Her thoughts, her images, her high desires. 
If the dear faculty of sight should fail, 
Still, it may be allow'd me to rememl)er 
What visionary powers of eye and soul 
In youth were mine ; when, station'd on the top 
Of some huge hill — expectant I beheld 
The sun rise up, from distant climes rcturn'd 
Darkness to chase, and sleep ; and bring the day 
His bounteous gift ! or saw him toward the deep 
Sink, with a retinue of flaming clouds 
Attended ; then, my spirit was entranced 
With joy exalted to beatitude ; 
The measure of my soul was fdl'd with bliss, 
And holiest love; as earth, sea, air, with light. 
With pomp, with glory, with magnificence ! 



COMMUNION WITH NATURE. 

Nature never did betray 

The heart that loved her : 'tis her privilege, 

'i'hrough all the years of this our life, to lead 

From joy to joy : for she can so inform 

The mind that is within us, so impress 

With quietness and beauty, and so feed 

With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 

The dreary intercourse of daily life. 

Shall e'er prevail against us, nor disturb 

Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold 

Is full of blessing.s. Therefore let the moon 

Shine on thee in thy solitary walk ; 

And let the misty mountain-winds be free 

To blow against thee : and in after years. 

When these wild ecstasies shall be matured 

Into a sober pleasure ; when thy mind 

Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, 

Thy memory be as a dwelling-place 

For all sweet sounds and harmonies ; oh ! then 

If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief. 

Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts 

Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, 

And these my exhortations ! 



FROM A POEM ON THE POWER OF 

SOUND. 

— The gift to King Amphion 

That wall'd a city with its melody 
Was for belief no dream: — thy skill, Arion ! 

Could humanize the creatures of the sea. 
Where men were monsters. A last grace he craves, 

Leave for one chant ; — the dulcet sound 
Steals from the deck o'er willing waves, 

And listening dolphins gather round. 
Self-cast, as with a desperate cour.se. 

Mid that strange audience, he bestrides 
A proud one, docile as a managed horse ; 

And singing, while the accordant hand 
Sweeps his harp, the master rides ; 

So shall he touch at length a friendly strand, 
And he, with his preserver, shine star-bright 
In memory, through silent night. 

The pipe of Pan, to shepherds 

Couch'd in the shadow of Mfenalian pines. 
Was passing sweet ; the eyeballs of the leopards 

That in high triumph drew the Lord of Vines, 
How did they sparkle to the cymbal's clang ! 

While Fauns and Satyrs beat the ground 
In cadence, — and Silenus swang 

This way and that, with wild-flowers crown'd. 
To life, to life give back thine ear : 

Ye who are longing to be rid 
Of fable, though to truth suV)servient, hear 

The little sprinkling of cold earth that fell 
Echoed from the coffin-lid ; 

The convict's summons in the steeple's knell ; 

" The vain distress-gun" from a leeward shore 

Repeated — beard and heard no more ! 
e2 



54 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



DION.* 

Fair is the swan, whose majesty, prevailing 

O'er breezeless water, on Locano's lake, 
Bears him on, while proudly sailing 

He leaves behind a moon-illumined wake: 
Behold ! the mantling spirit of reserve 
Fashions his neck into a goodly curve ; 
An arch thrown back between luxuriant wings 

Of whitest garniture, like fir-tree boughs. 
To which, on some unruffled morning, clings 

A flaky weight of winter's purest snows ! 
Behold I as with a gushing impulse heaves 
That downy prow, and softly cleaves 
The mirror of the crystal flood. 
Vanish inverted hill, and shadowy wood. 
And pendent rocks, where'er, in gliding state. 
Winds the mute creature without visible mate 
Or rival, save the queen of night 
Showering down a silver light. 
From heaven, upon her chosen favourite ! 

So pure, so bright, so fitted to embrace, 
Where'er he turn'd, a natural grace 
Of haughtiness without pretence, 
And to unfold a still magnificence. 
Was princely Dion, in the power 
And beauty of his happier hour. 

Nor less the homage that was seen to wait 
On Dion's virtues, when the lunar beam 

Of Plato's genius, from its lofty sphere, 
Fell round him in the grove of Academe, 
Softening their inbred dignity austere ; 

That he, not too elate 
With self-sufficing solitude, 
But with majestic lowliness endued, 
Might in the universal bosom reign. 
And from affectionate observance gain 

Help, under every change of adverse fate. 

Five thousand warriors — oh, the rapturous day! 
Each crown'd with flowers, and arm'd with spear 

and shield. 
Or ruder weapon which their course might yield. 

To Syracuse advance in bright array. 
Who leads them on'? — The anxious people see 

Long-exiled Dion marching at their head. 
He also crown'd with flowers of Sicily, 

And in a white, far-beaming corslet clad ! 
Pure transport, undisturb'd by doubt or fear. 

The gazers feel ; and, rushing to the plain, 

Salute those strangers as a holy train 
Or blest procession (to the immortals dear) 

That brought their precious liberty again. 
Lo ! when the gates are enter'd, on each hand, 

Down the long street, rich goblets fiU'd with wine 
In seemly order stand, 

On tables set, as if for rites divine ; — 
And, as the great deliverer marches by. 
He looks on festal ground with fruits bestrewn ; 
And flowers are on his pe'son thrown 

In boundless prodigality; 
Nor doth the general voice abstain from prayer, 
Invoking Dion's tutelary care, 
As if a very deity he were ! 

* See Plutarch. 



Mourn, hills and groves of Attica ! and mourn 
Illyssus, bending o'er thy classic urn ! 
Mourn, and lament for him whose spirit dreads 
Youronce sweet memory, studious walksand shades! 
For him who to divinity aspired. 

Not on the breath of popular applause. 

But through dependence on the sacred laws 
Framed in the schools where wisdom dwelt retired, 
Intent to trace the ideal path of right 

(More fair than heaven's broad causeway paved 
with stars) 
Which Dion learn'd to measure with delight; 

But he hath overleap'd the eternal bars; 
And, following guides whose craft holds no consent 
With aught that breathes the ethereal element. 
Hath staiii'd the robes of civil power with blood, 
Unjustly shed, though for the public good. 
Whence doubts that come too late, and wishes vain, 
Hollow excuses, and triumphant pain; 
And oft his cogitations sink as low 

As, through the abysses of a joyless heart, 
The heaviest plummet of despair can go; 

But whence that sudden check! that fearful -start ! 
He hears an uncouth sound — 

Anon his lifted eyes 
Saw at a long-drawn gallery's dusky bound 

A shape of more than mortal size 
And hideous aspect, stalking round and round! 
A woman's garb the phantom wore, 
And fiercely swept the marble floor, — 
Like Auster whirling to and fro, 

His force on Caspian foam to try; 
Or Boreas when he scours the snow 

That skins the plains of Thessaly, 
Or when aloft on Maenalus he stops 
His flight mid eddying pine-tree tops ! 

So, but from toil less sign of profit reaping. 

The sullen spectre to her purpose bow'd, 
Sweeping — vehemently sweeping — 

No pause admitted, no design avow'd ! 
" Avaunt, inexplicable guest! — avaunt !" 

Exclaim'd the chieftain, — "Let me rather see 
The coronal that coiling vipers make ; 
The torch that flames with many a lurid flake, 

And the long train of doleful pageantry 
Which they behold, whom vengeful furies haunt; 

Who, while they struggle from the scourge to flee, 
Move where the blasted soil is not unworn. 
And, in their anguish, bear what other minds have 
borne ! 

But shapes that come not at an earthly call, 

Will not depart when mortal voices bid; 

Lords of the visionary eye, whose lid 
Once raised, remains aghast, and will not fall ! 
Ye gods, thought he, that servile implement 
Obeys a mystical intent ! 
Your minister would brush away 

The spots that to my soul adhere; 
But should she labour night and day, 

They will not, cannot disaf)pear; 
Whence angry perturbations, — and that look 
Which no philosophy can brook ! 

Ill-fated chief I there are whose hopes are built 
Upon the ruins of thy glorious name ; 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



55 



Who, through the portal of one moment's guilt, 

Pursue thee with their deadly aim ! 
Oh, matchless perfidy ! portentous lust 

Of monstrous crime ! — that horror-strikingblade, 

Drawn in defiance of the gods, halh laid 
The noble Syracusan low in dust ! 

Shudder'd the walls, — the marble city wept, — 
And sylvan places heaved a pensive sigh; 

But in calm peace the appointed victim slept, 
As he had fallen, in magnanimity : 

Of spirit too capacious to require 
That Destiny her course should change; too just 

To his own native greatness, to desire 
That wretched boon, days lengthen'd by mistrust. 
So were the hopeless troubles, that involved 
The soul of Dion, instantly dissolved. 
Released from life and cares of princely state, 
He left this moral grafted on his fate, — 
" Him only pleasure leads, and peace attends 
Him, only him, the shield of Jove defends. 
Whose means are fair and spotless as his ends." 



CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY 
WARRIOR. 

Who is the happy warrior? Who is he 
That every man in arms should wish to be T 
— It is the generous spirit who, when brought 
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought 
Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought: 
Whose high endeavours are an inward light 
That makes the path before him always bright: 
Who, with a natural instinct to discern 
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn; 
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, 
But makes his moral being his prime care; 
Who, doom'd to go in company with pain. 
And fear, and bloodshed, miserable train! 
Turns his necessity to glorious gain ; 
In face of these doth exercise a power 
Which is our human nature's highest dower; 
Controls them and sul)dues. transmutes, bereaves 
Of their bad influence, and their good receives; 
By objects, which might force her soul to abate 
Her feeling, render'd more compassionate ; 
Is ])lacable — because occasions rise 
So often that demand such sacrifice ; 
More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure. 
As tempted more; more able to endure. 
As more exposed to suffering and distress; 
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness. 
— 'T is he whose law is reason ; who depends 
Upon that law as on the best of friends; 
Whence, in a state where men are tempted still 
To evil for a guard against worse ill, 
And what in quality or act is best 
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest. 
He fixes good on good alone, and owes 
To virtue every triumph that he knows : 
— Who, if he rise to station of command. 
Rises by open means ; and there will stand 
On honourable terms, or else retire 
And in himself possess his own desire ; 



Who comprehends his trust, and to the same 

Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim ; 

And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait 

For we^dth, or honours, or for worldly state ; 

Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall, 

Like showers of manna, if they come at all : 

Whose powers shed round him in the common strife. 

Or mild concerns of ordinary life, 

A constant influence, a peculiar grace; 

But who, if he be call'd upon to face 

Some awful moment to which Heaven has join'd 

Great issues, good or bad, for human kind, 

Is happy as a lover; and attired 

With sudden brightness, like a man inspired ; 

And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law 

In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw ; 

Or if an unexpected call succeed, 

Come when it will, is equal to the need : 

— He who though thus endued as with a sense 

And faculty for storm and turbulence, 

Is yet a soul whose master-bias leans 

To home-felt pleasures and to gentle scenes; 

Sweet images ! which, wheresoe'er he be. 

Are at his heart; and such fidelity 

It is his darling passion to approve ; 

More brave for this, that he hath much to love: — 

'T is, finally, the man who, lifted high, 

Conspicuous object in a nation's eye. 

Or left unthought-of in obscurity, — 

Who, with a toward or untoward lot, 

Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not, 

Plays, in the many games of life, that one 

Where what he most doth value must he won; 

Whom neither shape of danger can dismay. 

Nor thought of tender happiness betray ; 

Who, not content that former worth stand fast, 

Looks forward, persevering to the last, 

From well to better, daily self-surpast : 

Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth 

For ever, and to noble deeds give birth. 

Or he must go to dust without his fame. 

And leave a dead, unprofitable name, 

Finds comfort in himself and in his cause ; 

And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws 

His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause 

This is the happy warrior; this is he 

Whom every man in arms should wish to be. 



THE POWER OF VIRTUE. 

All true glory rests. 
All praise of safety, and all happiness, 
Upon the moral law. Egyptian 1'hebes ; 
Tyre by the margin of the sounding waves; 
Palmvra, central in the desert, fell ! 
And the arts died by which they had been raised. 
— Call Archimedes from his buried tomb 
Upon the plain of vanish'd Syracuse, 
And feelingly the sage shall make report 
How insecure, how baseless in itself 
Is that philosophy, whose sway is framed 
For mere materia! instruments : — How weak 
Tho.se arts, and high inventions, if uiipropp'd 
By virtue." 



56 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY, 
FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EAR- 
LY CHILDHOOD. 

"The chilJ is father of the man ; 
And I cnuld wish my days t(i be 
Bound eacli to each by natural piety." 

There was a time when meadow, grove, and spring, 
The earth, and every common sight, 
To me did seem 
Apparell'd in celestial Hght, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream, i 
It is not now as it hath been of yore ; — 
Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
By night or day, 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 
The rainbow come and goes, 
And lovely is the rose; 
The moon doth with delight 
Look round her when the heavens are bare : 
Waters on a starry night 
Are beautiful and fair ; 
The sunshine is a glorious birth, — 
But yet I know, where'er I go, 
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth. 

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, 

And while the young lambs bound 

As to the tabor's sound, 

To me alone there came a thought of grief; 

A timely utterance gave that thought relief, 

And I again am strong; 
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; 
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong ; 
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng. 
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep. 
And all the world is gay : 
Land and sea 
Give themselves up to jollity, 

And with the heart of May 
Doth every beast keep holiday ; — 
Thou child of joy. 
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 

Shepherd-boy ! 
Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call 

Ye to each other made ; I see 
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ; 
My heart is at your festival. 
My head hath its coronal, 
The fulness of your bliss — I feel — I feel it all. 
Oh, evil day ! if I were sullen. 
While earth herself is adorning 
This sweet M.iy-morning, 
And the children are culling 

On every side. 
In a thousand valleys far and wide. 

Fresh flowers ; while the sun shines warm. 
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm: — 

I hear, I hear — with joy I hear ! 

But tliere 's a tree, of many one, 
A single field which T have lookt-d upon. 
Both of them speak of something tiiat is gone: 

The pansy at my feet 

Doth the same tale repeat : 



Whither is fled the visionary gleam ! 
Where is it now, the glory and the dream ! 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar ; 

Not in entire forgetfulness. 

And not in utter nakedness. 
But trailing clouds of .glory do we come 

From God, who is our home ; 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
S'nades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing boy ; 
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows. 

He sees it in his joy : 
The youth, who daily farther from the east 

Must travel, still is nature's priest, 

And by the vision splendid 

Is on his way attended ; 
At length the man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day. 

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ; 

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, 

And, even with something of a mother's mind, 
And no unworthy aim. 
The homely nurse doth all she can 

To make her foster-child, her inmate man. 
Forget the glories he hath known, 

And that imperial palace whence he came. 

Behold the child among his new-born blisses, — 
A six years' darling of a pigmy size ! 
See, where 'mid work of his own hand, he lies. 
Fretted -by sallies of his mother's kisses, 
With light upon him from his father's eyes ! 
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart. 
Some fragment from his dream of human life, 
Shaped by himself with newly learned art: 

A wedding or a festival, 

A mourning or a funeral ; 
And this hath now his heart. 

And unto this he frames his song : 
Then will he fit his tonc:ue 
To dialogues of business, love, or strife ; 

But it will not be long 

Ere this be thrown aside. 

And with new joy and pride 
The little actor cons another part, — 
Filling from time to time his ' humorous stage' 
With all the persons, down to palsied age, 
That life brings with her in her equipage; 

As if his whole vocation 

Were endless imitation. 

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie 

Thy soul's immensity ; 
Thou best piiilosopher, who yet dost keep 
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, 
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep. 
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind ; — 

Mitchty prophet! Seer blest! 

On whom those truths do rest. 
Which we are toilina^ all our lives to find. 
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; 
Thou, over whom thy immortality 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



57 



Broods like the day, — a master o'er a slave, 
A presence which is not to be put by ; 
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might 
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height. 
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke 
The years to bring the inevitable yoke, 
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ? 
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight 
And custom lie upon thee with a weight 
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life ! 
O joy ! that in our embers 
Is something that doth live, 
That nature yet remembers 
What was so fugitive ! 
The thought of our past years in me doth breed 
Perpetual benediction : not indeed 
For that which is most worthy to be blest; 
Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, 
With new-fledgod hope still fluttering in his breast: 
Not for these I raise 
The song of thanks and praise, 
But for those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things, 
Fallings from us, vanishings ; 
Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized. 
High instincts, before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised : 
But for those first affections, 
Those shadowy recollections. 
Which, be they what they may. 
Are yet the fountain light of all our day. 
Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; 

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal silence: truths that wake. 

To perish never ; 
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour. 

Nor man nor boy. 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy ! 

Hence, in a season of calm weather. 
Though inland far we be. 
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither. 

Can in a moment travel thither. 
And see the children sport upon the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 

Then sing, ye birds ! sing, sing a joyous song ! 
And let the young lambs bound 
As to the tabor's sound ! 
We in thought will join your throng; 

Ye that pipe, and ye that play. 
Ye that through ynur hearts to-day 
Feel the gladness of the May ! 
What though the radiance which was once so bright 
Be now for ever taken from my sight, 
Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; 
We will grieve not, — rather find 
Strength in what remains behind ; 
In the primal sympathy 
Which, having been, must ever be ; 
8 



In the soothing thoughts that spring 

Out of human suffering; 

In the faith that looks through death, — 
In years that bring the pliilosophic mind. 
And O, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves. 
Forebode not any severing of our loves ! 
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ; 
I only have relinquished one delight, 
To live beneath your more hal>itual sway. 
I love the brooks, which down their channels fmt. 
Even more than when I tripped lightly as tliey ; 
The innocent brightness of a new-born day 

Is lovely yet ; 
The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
Do take a sober colouring from an eye 
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality : 
Another race hath been, and other palms are won. 
Thanks to the human heart by which we live. 
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, — 
To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 



EVENING BY THE THAMES. 

How richly glows the water's breast 

Before us, tinged with evening hues, 
While, facing thus the crimson west, 

The boat her silent course pursues I 
And see how dark the backward stream ! 

A little moment past so smiling ! 
And still, perchance, with faithless gleam, 

Some other loiterer beguiling. 

Such views the youthful bard allure ; 

But, heedless of the following gloom, 
He deems their colours shall endure 

Till peace go with him to the tomb. 
And let him nurse iiis fond deceit. 

And what if he must die in sorrow ! 
Who would not cherish dreams so sweet. 

Though grief and pain may come to-morrow 1 

Glide gently thus, for ever glide, 

O Thames ! that other bards may see 
As lovely visions by thy side 

As now, fair river ! come to me. 
glide, fair stream ! for ever so, 

Thy quiet soul on all bestovi'ing, 
Till all our minds for ever flow. 

As thy deep waters now are flowing. 

Vain thought ! — Yet be as now thou art, 

That in thy waters may be seen 
The image of a poet's heart, 

How bright, how solemn, how serene ! 
Such as did once the poet bless. 

Who, murmuring here a later* ditty, 
Could find no refuge from distress 

But in the nulder grief of pity. 



• Collins's Ode on the Death of Thomson, the last 
wriiteii of the poems which were published during his 
lifulinie. 



58 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



SCORN NOT THE SONNET. 

Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frown'd, 
Mindless of its just honours ; with this key 
Shakspeare unlock'd his heart ; the melody 
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound ; 
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound ; 
With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief; 
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle-leaf 
Amid the cypress with which Dante crown'd 
His visionary brow ; a glow-worm lamp, 
It cheer'd mild Spenser, call'd from faery land 
To struggle through dark ways ; and when a damp 
Fell round the path of IMilton, in his hand 
The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew 
Soul-animatiiig strains, — alas, too few. 



GREAT MEN. 

Great men have been among us ; hands that penn'd 
And tongues that utter'd wisdom — better none; 
The latter Sydney, Marvel, Harrington, 
Young Vane, and others who called Milton friend. 
These moralists could act and comprehend : 
They knew how genuine glory was put on ; 
Taught us how rightfully a nation shone [bend 
In splendour; what strength was, that would not 
But in magnanimous meekness. France, 'tis strange, 
Hath brought forth no such souls as we had then. 
Perpetual emptiness ! unceasing change ! 
No single volume paramount, no code, 
No master spirit, no determined road ; 
But equally a want of books and men ! 



MILTON. 

Milton ! thou shouldst be living at this hour ; 
England hath need of thee ; she is a fen 
Of stagnant waters ; altars, sword, and pen, 
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, 
Have forfeited their ancient English dower 
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men ; 
Oh ! raise us up, return to us again ; 
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. 
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart : 
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: 
Pure as the naked heavens — majestic, free, 
So didst thou travel on life's common way 
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart 
The lowliest duties on herself did lay. 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 

ToussAixT, the most unhappy man of men ! 
Whether the whistling rustic tend his plough 
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now 
Pillow'd in some deep dungeon's earless den ; — 
O miserable chieftain ! where and when 
Wilt thou find patience ] Yet die not; do thou 
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow. 
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again. 
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind 
Powers that will work for thee ; air, earth, and skies ; 
There's not a breathing of the common wind 
That will forget thee ; thou hast great allies ; 
Thy friends are exultations, agonies. 
And love, and man's unconquerable mind. 



THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US. 

The world is too much with us; late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 
Little we see in nature that is ours ; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
This .sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; 
The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers; 
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune ; 
It moves us not. Great God ! I'd rather be 
A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn ; 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses tliat would make me less forlorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 



A NATION'S POWER NOT IN ARMIES. 

The power of armies is a visible thing 
Formal and circumscribed in time and space ; 
But who the limits of that power shall trace, 
Which a brave people into light can bring 
Or hide at will, — for freedom combating 
By just revenge inflamed ] No foot may chase, 
No eye can follow, to & fatal place 
That power, that spirit, whether on the wing 
Like the strong wind, or sleeping like the wind 
Within its awful caves. From year to year 
Springs this indigenous produce far and near ; 
No craft this subtle element can bind. 
Rising like water from the soil, to find 
In every nook a lip that it may cheer. 



A VISION. 

In- my mind's eye a Temple, like a cloud 
Slowly surmounting some invidious hill, 
Rose out of darkness : the bright Work stood still ; 
And might of its own beauty have been proud, 
But it was fashion'd and to God was vow'd 
By virtues that diflfused, in every part, 
Spirit divine through forms of human art: [loud, 
Faith had her arch — her arch, when winds blew 
Into the consciousness of safety thrill'd ; 
And Love her towers of dread foundation laid 
Under the grave of things ; Hope had her spire 
Star-high, and pointing still to something higher; 
Trembling I gazed, but heard a voice — it said, 
"Hell-gates are powerless phantomswhenioebuild." 



CHILDHOOD. 

Am sleeps — from strife or stir the clouds are free ; 

The holy time is quiet as a nun. 

Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun 

Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; 

The gentleness of heaven brood's o'er the sea : 

But list ! the mighty Being is awake. 

And doth with his eternal motion make 

A sound like thunder — everlastingly. 

Dear child ! dear happy girl ! if thou appear 

Heedless — untouch'd with awe or serious thought. 

Thy nature is not therefore less divine : 

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year ; 

And worshippest at the Tem})le's inner shrine, 

God being with thee when we know it not. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



50 



ELEGIAC STANZAS.* 

Lulled by the sound of pastoral bells, 
Rude nature's pilgrims did we go, 
From the dread summit of the Quccn-j- 
Of mountains, through a deep ravine, 
Where, in her holy chnpel, dwells 
"Our Lady of the Snow." 

The sky was blue, the air was mild ; 

Free were the streams and green the bowers ; 

As if, to rough assaults unlinown. 

The genial spot had ever shown 

A countenance that as sweetly smiled — 

The face of summer hours. 

And we were gay, our hearts at ease ; 
With pleasure dancing through the frame 
We journeyed ; all we knew of care — 
Our path that straggled here and there ; 
Of trouble — but the fluttering breeze ; 
Of winter — but a name. 

If foresight could have rent the veil 
Of three short days — but hush — no more ! 
Calm is the grave, and cahiicr none 
Than that to which thy cares are gone, 
Thou victim of the stormy gale ; 
Asleep on Zurich's shore ! 

Oh Goddard ! what art thoul — a name — 
A sunbeam followed by a shade ! 

* The lamented youth whose untitiiely death eive 
occasion to these elegiac verses, was Fredericis William 
Godilard, from Boston in North America. He was in his 
twentieth year, and hid resided for some time with a 
clergynian in the neighbourhood of Geneva for the com- 
pletion of his education. Accompanied by a fellow-pnpil, 
a native of Scotland, he had just set out on a Swiss tour, 
when it was his misfortune to fall in with a friend of 
mine who was hastening to join our party. The travel- 
lers, after spending a day together on the road from 
Berne and at Soleure, took leave of each other at night, 
the young men having intended to proceed directly to 
Zurich. But early in the morning my friend found his 
new acquaintances, who were informed of the object of 
his journey, and the friends he was in pursuit of, equip- 
ped to accompany him. We met at Lucerne the suc- 
ceeding evening, and Mr. G. and his fellow-student be- 
came in consequence our travelling-companions for a 
couple of days. We ascended the Righi together; and, 
after contemplating the sunrise from that noble moun- 
tain, we separated at an hour and on a spot well suited 
to the parting of those who were to meet no more. Our 
party descended through the valley of our Lady of the 
Snow, and our late companions, to Art. We had hoped 
to meet in a few weeks at Geneva ; but on the third 
succeeding day (the 21st of August) Mr. Goddard pe- 
rished, being overset in a boat while crossing Ihe lake of 
Zurich. His companion saved himself by swimming, 
and was hospitably received in the mansion of a Swiss 
gentleman (M. Keller) situated on the eastern coast of 
the lake. The corpse of poor Goddard was cast ashore 
on the estate of the same gentleman, who generously 
perfirmed all the rites of hospitality which could be 
rendered to the dead as well as to the living. He caused 
a handsome mural monument to be erected in Ihe church 
of Kiisuacht, which records the premature fate of the 
young American, and on the shores too of the lake the 
traveller may read an inscription pointing out the spot 
where the body was deposited by the waves. 

t Mount Righi — Regina Montium. 



Nor more, for aught that time supplies, 
The great, the experienced, and tlie wise : 
Too much from this frail earth we claim. 
And therefore are l)etraycd. 

We met, while festive mirth ran wild. 
Where, from a t'eep lake's mighty urn. 
Forth slips, like an enfranchised slave, 
A sea-green river, proiid to lave. 
With current swifl and undefilcd. 
The towers of old Lucerne. 

W^e parted upon solemn ground 
Far-lifted towards the unfading sky ; 
But all our thoughts were i/ien of earth, 
That gives to common pleasures birth ; 
And nothing in our hearts we found 
That prompted even a sigh. 

Fetch, sympathizing powers of air, 
Fetch, ye that post o'er seas and lands, 
Herbs moistened by Virginian dew, 
A most untimely grave to strew. 
Whose turf may never know the care 
Of kindred human hands ! 

Beloved bj' every gentle muse. 

He left his transatlantic home : 

Europe, a realized romance, 

Had opened on his eager glance ; 

M'hat present bliss ! — what golden views ! 

What stores for years to come ! 

Though lodged within no vigorous frame, 
His soul her daily tasks renewed, 
Blithe as the lark on sun-gilt wings 
High poised — or as the wren that sings 
In shady places, to proclaim 
Her modest gratitude. 

Not vain is sadly uttered praise ; 
The words of truth's memorial vow 
Are sweet as morning fragrance shed 
From flowers 'mid Goldau's ruins bred ; 
As evening's fondly lingering rays 
On Righi's silent brow. 

Lamented youth ! to thy cold clay 
Fit obsequies the stranger paid ; 
And piety shall guard the stone 
Which hath not left the spot unknown 
Where the wild waves resigned their prey — 
And that which marks thy bed. 

And, when thy mother weeps for thee, 
Lost youth ! a solitary mother ; 
This tribute from a casual friend 
A not unwelcome aid may lend, 
To feed the tender luxury. 
The rising pang to smother.* 

* The persuasion here expressed was not groundless. 
The first human consolation that the afflicted mother 
felt, was derived from this tribute to her son's nienmry, 
a fact which the author learned, at his own residence, 
from her daughter, who visited Europe some years af- 
terwards. — Goldan is one of the villages desolated by the 
fall of part of the Mountain Rossberg. 



60 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



PRESENTIMENTS. 

Presf.^jtiments ! they judge not right 
Who deem that ye from open light 

Retire in fear of shame ; 
All heaven-hum instincts shun the touch 
Of vulgar sense, — and, being such, 

Such privilege ye claim. 

The tear whose source I could not guess, 
The deep sigh that seemed fatherless, 

Were mine in early days ; 
And now, unforced by time to part 
With fancy, I obey my heart, 

And venture on your praise. 

What though some busy foes to good. 
Too potent over nerve and blood, 

Lurk near you — and combine 
To taint the health which ye infuse ; 
This hides not fioni the moral muse 

Your origin divine. 

How oft from you, derided powers ! 
Comes faith that in auspicious hours 

Builds castles, not of air; 
Bodings unsanctioned by the will 
Flow from your visionary skill. 

And teach us to beware. 

The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift. 
That no philosophy can lift. 

Shall vanish, if ye please, 
Like morning mist ; and, where it lay. 
The spirits at your bidding play 

In gaycty and ease. 

Star-guided contemplations move 

Through space, though calm, not raised above 

Prognostics that ye rule ; 
The naked Indian of the wild, 
And haply, too, the cradled child, 

Are pupils of your school. 

But who can fathom your intents. 
Number their signs or instruments 1 

A rainbow, a sunbeam, 
A subtle smell that spring unbinds. 
Dead pause abrupt of midnight winds. 

An echo, or a dream. 

The laughter of the Christmas hearth, 
With sighs of self-exhausted mirth. 

Ye feelingly reprove; 
And daily, in the conscious breast, 
Your visitations are a test 

And exercise of love. 

When some great change gives boundless scope 
To an exulting nation's hope, 

Oft, startled and made wise 
By your low-breathed interpretings, 
The simply-meek foretaste the springs 

Of bitter contraries. 

Ye daunt the proud array of war, 
Pervade the lonely ocean far 
As sail hath been unfurl'd ; 



For dancers in the festive hall 
What ghastly partners hath your call 
Fetched from the shadowy world ! 

'Tis said, that warnings ye dispense, 
Em'.ioiden'd by a keener sense ; 

That men have lived for whom. 
With dread precision, ye made clear 
The hour that in a distant year 

Should knell them to the tomb. 

Unwelcome insight ! Yet there are 
Blest times when mystery is laid bare, 

I'ruth shows a glorious face. 
While on that isthmus which commands 
The councils of both worlds, she stands. 

Sage spirits ! by your grace. 

God, who instructs the brutes to scent 
All changes of the element, 

Whose wisdom fix'd the scale 
Of natures, for our wants provides 
By higher, sometimes humbler guides, 

When lights of reason fail. 



TO THE DAISY. 

Iv youth from rock to rock I went. 
From hill to hill, in discontent 
Of pleasure high and turbulent, 

Most pleased when most uneasy ; 
But now my own delights I make, — 
My thirst at every rill can slake, 
And nature's love of thee partake. 

Her much-loved daisy ! 

Thee winter in the garland wears 
That thinly decks his few gray hairs; 
Spring parts the clouds with softest airs. 

That she may sun thee ; 
Whole summer fields are thine by right; 
And autumn, melanchily wight! 
Doth in thy crimson head delight 

When rains are on thee. 

In shoals and hands, a morrice train, 
Thou greet'st the traveller in the lane ; 
Pleased at his greeting thee again ; 

Yet nothing daunted 
Nor grieved if thou be set at nought: 
And oft alone in nooks remote 
We meet thee, like a pleasant thought, 

VVhen such are wanted. 

Be violets in their secret mews 

The flowers the wanton zephyrs choose ; 

Proud be the rose, with rams and dews 

Her head impearling; 
Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim, 
Yet hast not gone without thy fame ; 
Thou art indeed by many a claim 

The poet's darling. 

If to a rock from rains he fly. 
Or, some bright day of April sky. 
Imprisoned by hot sunshine, lie 

Near the green holly. 
And wearily at length should fare ; 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



61 



He needs but look about, and there 
Thou art! — a friend at hand, to scare 
His melancholy. 

A hundred times, by rock or bower, 
Ere thus I have lain couched an hour, 
Have I derived from thy sweet power 

Some apprehension ; 
Some steady love ; some brief delight ; 
Some memory that had taken flight; 
Some chime of fancy wrong or right; 

Or stray invention. 

If stately passions in me burn. 

And one chance look to thee should turn, 

I drink out of an humbler urn, 

A lowlier pleasure; 
The homely sympathy that heeds 
The common life our nature breeds; 
A wisdom fitted to the needs 

Of hearts at leisure. 

Fresh-smitten by the morning ray, 
When thou art up, alert and gay, 
Then, cheerful flower! my spirits play 

With kindred gladness : 
And when, at dusk, by dews opprest, 
Thou sink'st, the image of thy rest 
Hath often eased my pensive breast 

Of careful sadness. 

And all day long I number yet, 
All seasons through, another debt, 
Which I. wherever thou art met, 

To thee am owing; 
An instant call it, a blind sense; 
A happy, genial influence, 
Coming one knows not how, nor whence, 

Nor whither going. 

Child of the year ! that round dost run 
Thy pleasant course, — when day's begun, 
As ready to salute the sun 

As lark or leveret, 
Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain; 
Nor be less dear to future men 
Than in old time ; — thou not in vain 

Art nature's favourite. 



SHE DWELT AMONG THE UNTROD- 
DEN WAYS. 

Sue dwelt among the untrodden way 

Beside the springs of Dove, 
A maid, whom there were none to praise, 

And very few to love : 

A violet by a mossy stone 

Half hidden from the eye! 
Fair as a star, when only one 

Is shining in the sky. 

She lived unknown — and few could know 

When Lucy ceased to be ; 
But she is in her grave, and, oh, 

The dill'erence to me ! 



ODE TO DUTY. 

Steh-v daughter of the voice of God ! 

O Duty ! if that name thou love 
Who art a light to guide, a rod 

To check the erring, and reprove ; 
Thou, who art victory and law 
When empty terrors overawe ; 
From vain temptations dost set free ; 
And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity ! 

There are who ask not if thine eye 

Be on them ; who, in love and truth, 
Where no misgiving is, rely 

Upon the genial sense of youth : 
Glad hearts ! without reproach or blot; 
Who do thy work and know it not ; 
Oh ! if through confidence misplaced 
They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power ! around 
them cast. 

Serene will be our days and bright, 

And happy will our nature be. 
When love is an unerring light, 

And joy its own security. 
And they a blissful course may hold 
Even now, who, not unwisely bold. 
Live in the spirit of this creed ; 
Yet find thy firm support, according to their need. 

I, loving freedom, and untried ; 

No sport of every random gust, 
Yet being to myself a guide, 

Too blindly have reposed my trust: 
And oft, when in my heart was heard 
Thy timely mandate, I deferr'd 
The task, in smoother walks to stray ; 
But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may. 

Through no disturbance of my soul, 

Or strong compunction in me wrought, 
I supplicate for thy control ; 

But in the quietness of thought: 
Me this uncharter'd freedom tires ; 
I feel the weight of chance-desires: 
My hopes no more must change their name, 
I long for a repose that ever is the same. 

Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 

The Godhead's most benignant grace ; 
Nor know we any thing so fair 

As is the smile upon thy face: 
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds; 
And fragrance in thy footing treads; 
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are 
fresh and strong. 

To humbler functions, awful Power! 

I call thee : I myself commend 
Unto thy guidance from this hour ; 

Oh, let my weakness have an end ! 
Give unto me, made lowly wise, 
The spirit of self-sacrifice ; 
The confidence of reason give ;■ 
And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live ! 
F 



62 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



WE ARE SEVEN. 

A SIMPLE child, 

That lightly draws its breath, 
And feels its lite in every limb, 

What should it know of death? 

I met a little cottage girl : 

She was eight years old, she said ; 

Her hair was thick with many a curl 
That clustered round her head. 

She had a rustic, woodland air, 

And she was wildly clad : 
Her eyes were fair, and very fair , 

— Her beauty made me glad. 

" Sisters and brothers, little maid, 

How many may you be V 
" How many 1 Seven in all," she said, 

And wondering looked at me. 

" And who are they 1 I pray you, tell." 
She answered, " Seven are we ; 

And two of us at Conway dwell, 
And two are gone to sea. 

"Two of us in the churchyard lie. 

My sister and my brother; 
And, in the churchyard cottage, I 

Dwell near them with my mother." 

" Yon say that two at Conway dwell, 

And two are gone to sea. 
Yet ye arc seven ! — I pray you tell. 

Sweet maid, how this may be." 

Then did the little maid reply, 

" Seven boys and girls are we ; 
Two of us in the churchyard lie. 

Beneath the churchyard tree." 

"You run about, my little maid, 

Your limbs they are alive ; 
If two are in the churchyard laid, 

Then ye are only five." 

" Their graves are green, they may be seen," 

The little maid replied, 
" Twelve steps or more from my mother's door. 

And they are side by side. 

"My stockings there I often knit. 

My kerchief there I hem ; 
And there upon the ground I sit, 

And sing a song to them. 

"And often after sunset, sir, 

When it is light and fair, 
I take my little porringer. 

And eat my supper there. 

"The first that died was sister Jane : 

In bed she moaning lay. 
Till God released her of her pain ; 

And then she went away. 



" So in the churchyard she was laid ; 

And, when the grass was dry. 
Together round her grave we played, 

My brother John and I. 

" And when the ground was white with snow, 

And I could run and slide, 
My brother John was forced to go. 

And he lies by her side." 

" How many are you, then," said I, 

" If they two are in heaven ?" 
Quick was the little maid's reply, 

"O master ! we are seven." 

" But they are dead ; those two are dead ! 

Their spirits are in heaven !" 
'T was throwing words away : for still 
The little maid would have her will, 

And said, "Nay, we are seven !" 



AN INCIDENT AT BRUGES. 

Ix Bruges town is many a street 

Whence busy life hath fled ; 
Where, without hurry, noiseless feet 

The grass-grown pavement tread. 
There heard we, halting in the shade 

Flung from a convent-tower, 
A harp that tuneful prelude made 

To a voice of thrilling power. 

The measure, simple truth to tell. 

Was lit for some gay throng; 
Though from the same grim turret iefl 

The shadow and the song. 
When silent were both voice and chords. 

The strain seemed doubly dear. 
Yet sad as sweet, — for English words 

Had fallen upon the ear. 

It was a breezy hour of eve ; 

And pinnacle and spire 
Quivered and seemed almost to heave, 

Clothed with innocuous fire ; 
But, where we stood, the setting sun 

Showed little of his state : 
And, if the glory reached the nun, 

'Twas through an iron grate. 

Not always is the heart unwise, 

Nor pity idly born. 
If even a passing stranger sighs 

For them who do not mourn. 
Sad is thy doom, self-solaced dove, 

Captive, whoe'er thou be 1 
Oh ! what is beauty, what is love, 

And opening life to theel 

Such feeling pressed upon my soul, 

A feeling sanctified 
By one soft trickling tear that stole 

From the maiden at my side ; 
Less tribute could she pay than this, 

Borne gayly o'er the sea. 
Fresh from the beauty and the bUss 

Of English liberty 1 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



63 



THE SOLITARY REAPER. 

Behold her, single in the field, 

Yon solitary Highland lass ! 

Reaping and singing by herself, 

Stop here, or gently pass ! 
Alone she cuts and binds the grain, 
And sings a melancholy strain ; 
Oh listen ! for the vale profound 
Is overflowing with the sound. 

No nightingale did ever chant 

More welcome notes to weary bands 
Of travellers in some shady haunt, 

Among Arabian sands : 
Such thrilling voice was never heard 
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, 
Breaking the silence of tlie seas 
Among the farthest Hebrides. 

Will no one tell me what she sings'? 

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 
For old, unhappy, far-off things. 

And battles long ago : 
Or is it some more humble lay, 
Familiar matter of to-day 1 
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, 
That has been, and may be again 1 

Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang 

As if her song could have no ending; 
I saw her singing at her work, 
And o'er the sickle bending. 
I listen'd, motionless and still ; 
And when I mounted up the hill. 
The music in my heart I bore. 
Long after it was heard no more. 



AUTUMN. 

The sylvan slopes with corn-clad fields 
Are hung, as if with golden shields. 

Bright trophies of the sun ! 
Like a fair sister of the sky, 
Unruffled doth the blue lake lie, 

The mountains looking on. 

And, sooth to say, yon vocal grove, 
Albeit uninspired by love. 

By love untaught to ring. 
May well afford to mortal ear 
An impulse more profoundly dear 

Than music of the spring. 

For that from turbulence and heat 
Proceeds, from some uneasy seat 

In nature's struggling frame. 
Some region of impatient life; 
And jealousy, and quivering strife. 

Therein a portion claim. 

This, this is holy; while I hear 
These vespers of another year, 

This hymn of thanks and praise. 
My spirit seems to mount above 
The anxieties of human love. 

And earth's precarious days. 



But list! — thouffh winter storms be nigh, 
Uncheck'd is that soft harmony : 

There lives Who can provide 
For all his creatures ; and in Him, 
Even like the radiant seraphim. 

These choristers confide. 



SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT. 

She was a phantom of delight, 
When first she gleam'd upon my sight; 
A lovely apparition, sent 
To be a moment's ornament ; 
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; 
Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair; 
But all things else about her drawn 
From May-time and the cheerful dawn; 
A dancing shape, an image gay. 
To haunt, to startle, and waylay. 

I saw her upon nearer view, 

A spirit, yet a woman too ! 

Her household motions light and free, 

And steps of virgin liberty ; 

A countenance in which did meet 

Sweet records, promises as sweet; 

A creature not too bright or good 

For human nature's daily food ; 

For transient sorrows, simple wiles. 

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. 

And now I see with eye serene 
The very pulse of the machine ; 
A being breathing thoughtful breath, 
A traveller between life and death ; 
The reason firm, the temperate will. 
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill ; 
A perfect woman, nobly plann'd. 
To warn, to comfort, and command ; 
And yet a spirit still, and bright 
With something of an angel light. 



A MOUNTAIN- SOLITUDE. 

It was a cove, a huge recess, 

That keeps till June December's snow; 
A lofty precipice in front, 

A silent tarn below ! 
Far in the bosom of Helvellyn, 
Remote from public road or dwelling, 
Pathway, or cultivated land, 
From trace of human foot or hand. 

There sometimes does a leaping fish 

Send through the tarn a lonely cheer- 
The crags repeat the raven's croak 

In symphony austere; 
Thither the rainbow comes, the cloud ; 
And mists that spread the flying shroud. 
And sun-beams; and the sounding blast, 
That, if it could, would hurry past, 
But that enormous barrier binds it fast. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh on 
the fifteenth of August, 1771. "My birth," 
says he, " was neither distinguished nor sor- 
did ; according to the prejudices of my coun- 
try it was esteemed gentle, as I was con- 
nected, though remotely, with ancient fami- 
lies, both by my father's and mother's side." 
Delicacy of constitution, attended by a lame- 
ness which proved permanent, was apparent 
in his infancy, and induced his removal to the 
rural residence of his grandfather, near the 
Tweed, where he remained until about the 
eighth year of his age. In the introduction 
to the third canto of Marmion he has graphi- 
cally described the scenery by which he was 
surrounded, his interest in its ruins and his 
sympathy with its grandeur and beauty. The 
romantic ballads and legends to which he 
listened here were treasured in his memory, 
and had a powerful influence upon his future 
character. From 1779 to 1783 he was in the 
high school of Edinburgh. He tells us, allud- 
ing to this period, that he had a reputation as 
a tale-teller, and that the applause of his com- 
panions was a recompense for the disgraces 
and punishments he incurred by being idle 
himself and keeping others idle during hours 
which should have been devoted to study. 
In 1783 he became a student in the university, 
but his education proceeded unprosperously. 
He had no inclination for science, and was a 
careless learner of the languages, though he 
acquired the French, Italian, and Spanish, so 
as to read them with sufficient ease. 

In 1786 he entered the law office of his 
father, and in 1792, being then nearly twenty- 
one years of age, he was called to the bar. 
He paid little attention to his profession, but 
was an industrious reader of romantic lite- 
rature, in his own and foreign languages, 
especially in the German, with which he had 
recently become familiar. The position of his 
family, and his own cheerful temper and fine 
colloquial abilities, procured him admission to 
the best society of the city, and led to his 
acquaintance with a young lady by whose mar- 
riage long and fondly-cherished hopes were 
disappointed. Her image was for ever in his 



memory, and inspired some of the most beauti- 
ful passages in his poetry. In 1797, however, 
he became acquainted with Miss Charpentier, 
the daughter of a French refugee, to whom, in 
the autumn of that year, he was married. 

Previous to this time M. G. Lewis had 
acquired considerable reputation by his imita- 
tions of the German ballads ; and conceiving 
that if inferior to him in poetical powers, he 
was his superior in general information, Scott 
had undertaken to become his rival. His ear- 
liest efforts, translations of Burger's Leonore 
and Wild Huntsman, were published in 1796, 
and two years afterward appeared in London 
his version of Goethe's Goetz von Berlichin- 
gen. Each of these volumes was favourably 
reviewed, but coldly received by the public. 

Soon after his marriage Scott had taken a 
pleasant house on the banks of the Tweed, 
about thirty miles from Edinburgh. By the 
death of his father he had come into posses- 
sion of a considerable income; his wife had 
an annuity of four hundred pounds; and the 
office of sheriff of Selkirkshire, which imposed 
very little duty, now produced him some three 
hundred more. At twenty-eight years of age 
few men were more happily situated, but he 
had as yet done scarcely any thing toward 
founding a reputation as a man of letters. 

His leisure hours were for several years 
devoted to the preparation of The Minstrelsy 
of the Scottish Border, the third and last 
volume of which appeared in 1803. This 
work gave him at once an enviable position. 
He soon after visited London, where he formed 
friendships with the leading authors of the 
day, and in the beginning of 1805 he placed 
himself in the list of classic writers by the 
publication of his first great original work. 
The Lay of the Last Minstrel, which was re- 
ceived with universal applause, and of which 
more than thirty thousand copies were sold in 
the ensuing twenty years. 

The limits of this biography forbid any 
thing nrore than an allusion to Scott's ob- 
taining one of the principal clerkships in the 
Scottish Court of Session, his quarrel with 
Constable, partnership with Ballantyne, esta- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



65 



blishment of the Quarterly Review, and early 
ambition to elevate his social position by ac- 
quiring territorial possessions. 

In 1805 he wrote the first chapters of a 
novel, but the opinion of a friend to whom the 
manuscript was submitted prevented its com- 
pletion. In 1808 he published Marmion, in 
1810 The Lady of the Lake, in 1811 The Vi- 
sion of Don Roderick, in 1812 Rokeby, and 
in 1813 The Bridal of Triermain. His poeti- 
cal career closed in 1815 with The Lord of the 
Isles and The Field of Waterloo ; althouirh he 
subsequently published anonymously Harold 
the Dauntless and his Dramatic Writings, 
which were unworthy of his reputation. His 
range as a poet was limited ; it had been all 
explored ; and the greatest of modern poets 
had in the mean time taken a place with the 
sacred few who are destined to live immor- 
tally in men's hearts. Scott was among the 
first to recognise Byron's superiority. In 
every field he would himself be first or no- 
thing. He quitted the lyre for ever. 

Scott had already published his admirable 
editions of Swift and Dryden ; and from this 
period till 1825 his name was not before the 
public except in connection with Paul's Let- 
ters to his Kinsfolk, and a few articles in the 
Quarterly Review and the Enc3'clopaedia Bri- 
tannica. But in these ten years he laid the 
foundation of the highest reputation which the 
world of letters has furnished in the nineteenth 
century. The composition of the novel which 
had been commenced in 1805 was resumed, 
and finished with remarkable rapidity. The 
work appeared in the summer of 1814 under 
the title of Waverley, and its success was 
immediate and unparalleled. The series of 
novels to which this gave a distinguishing 
title followed each other in quick succession, 
and were translated into almost every written 
language. The Author of Waverley became 
a part of the existence of mankind, and the 
discovery of his name the great enigma of the 
age. Guy Mannering was published in 1815, 
The Antiquary, Old Mortality, and the Black 
Dwarf in 1816, Rob Roy and the Heart of 
Mid-Lothian in 1818, The Bride of Lammer- 
moor and the Legend of Montrose in 1819, 
Ivanhoe, The Monastery, and The Abbot in 
1820, Konilworth in 1821, The Pirate and the 
Fortunes of Nigel in 1822, Quentin Durward 
and Peveril of the Peak in 1823, St. Ronan's 
Well and Redgauntlet in 1824, Tales of the 

9 



Crusaders in 1825, Woodstock in 1826, First 
Series of Chronicles of the Canongate and 
Tales of a Grandfather in 1827, Second Series 
of Chronicles of the Canongate and of the 
Tales of a Grandfather in 1828, Anne of Geir- 
stein and the Third Series of Tales of a Grand- 
father in 1829, and Count Robert of Paris and 
Castle Dangerous in 1831. 

In these years the estate of Abbotsford had 
been purchased and his palace erected. In 
1820 he had been made a baronet, and from 
that time his house had been thronged by the 
most illustrious of his contemporaries. A 
change, to Scott of all changes the most 
terrible, awaited him. In 1826 the houses of 
Ballantyne and Constable stopped payment, 
and he was involved in their ruin. Though 
the amount of his debts seemed too great for 
a hope to exist that they could ever be paid, 
he refused to be dealt with as a bankrupt. He 
pledged the exertions of his future life to the 
discharge of the claims of his creditors. In 
the two years ending with 1827 he realized 
from his writings the astonishing sum of forty 
thousand pounds, and soon after his death his 
executors completed the payment of all his 
liabilities. Among his latest works, contri- 
buting to this result, were The History of 
Scotland and The Life of Napoleon. The 
last of these had an immense sale, and brought 
a larger profit than any of his previous writ- 
ings. Its popularity, however, was transient. 
It is a brilliant chronicle of events, but par- 
tial in its views, and executed with too little 
care and research to add to such a reputation 
as Walter Scott's. 

In 1829 Scott's health had materially de- 
clined, and in the following year his intellect 
began to fail under the weight of his cares 
and labours. In September, 1831, he sailed, 
in a ship of war furnished by the government, 
for Malta and Naples, in the hope that relaxa- 
tion and a voyage at sea would induce his 
restoration. After a few months passed in 
Italy, his mind became a wreck, and his 
friends made haste to reach home with him 
before his death. They arrived at Abbotsford 
on the eleventh of Jul}'', 1832; he lingered, 
with a few intervals of consciousness, until 
the twenty-first of September, and expired. 
His remains are buried in the romantic ruins 
of Dryburgh Abbey, which, like the tomb of 
Shakspeare, has become a place of pilgrim- 
age for the world. 



66 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



THE TRIAL OF CONSTANCE. 

Ix low dark rounds the arches hung, 

From the rude rock the side-walls sprung ; 

The grave-stones, rudely sculptured o'er, 

Half-sunk in earth, by time half-wore, 

Were all the pavement of the floor ; 

The mildew drops fell one by one, 

With tinkling plash, upon the stone. 

A cresset, in an iron chain. 

Which served to light this drear domain, 

With damp and darkness seem'd to strive, 

As if it scarce might keep alive; 

And yet it dimly served to show 

The awful conclave met below. 

There, met to doom in secrecy. 

Were met the heads of convents three ; 

All servants of Saint Benedict, 

The statutes of whose order strict 

On iron table lay ; 
In long black dress, on seats of stone. 
Behind were these three judges shown, 

By the pale cresset's ray : 
The abbess of Saint Hilda's, there, 
Sate for a space with visage bare. 
Until, to hide her bosom's swell, 
And tear-drops that for pity fell, 

She closel}' drew her veil ; 
Yon shrouded figure, as I guess. 
By her proud mien and flowing dress, 
Is Tynemouth's haughty prioress. 

And she with awe looks pale: 
And he, that Ancient Man, whose sight 
Has long been quench'd by age's night. 
Upon whose wrinkled brow alone. 
Nor ruth, nor mercy's trace is shown. 

Whose look is hard and stern, — 
Saint Cuthbert's Abbot is his style; 
For sanctity call'd, through the isle, 

The saint of Lindisfern. 
Before them stood a guilty pair ; 
But, though an equal fate they share, 
Yet one alone deserves our care. 
Her sex a page's dress belied ; 
The cloak and doublet, loosely tied. 
Obscured her charms, but could not hide. 

Her cap down o'er her face she drew ; 
And, on her doublet-breast, 

She tried to hide the badge of blue. 
Lord Marmion's falcon crest. 
But, at the prioress' command, 
A monk undid the silken band, 

That tied her tresses fair. 
And raised the bonnet from her head, 
And down her slender form they spread, 

In ringlets rich and rare. 
Constance de Beverley they know. 
Sister profess'd of Fontevraud, 
Whom the church number'd with the dead, 

For broken vows, and convent fled 

Her comrade was a sordid soul, 

Such as does murder for a meed ; 
Who, but of fear, knows no control. 
Because his conscience, sear'd and foul, 

Feels not the import of his deed ; 
One, whose brute feeling ne'er aspires 



Beyond his own more brute desires. 

Such tools the Tempter ever needs 

To do the savagest of deeds : 

For them no vision'd terrors daunt. 

Their nights no fancied spectres haunt ; 

One fear with them, of all most base — 

The fear of death, — alone finds place. 

This wretch was clad in frock and cowl. 

And shamed not loud to moan and howl. 

His body on the floor to dash. 

And crouch, like hound beneath the lash ; 

While his mute partner, standing near, 

Waited her doom without a tear. 

Yet well the luckless wretch might shriek. 

Well might her paleness terror speak ; 

For there were seen in that dark wall 

Two niches, narrow, deep and tall ; — 

Who enters at such griesly door 

Shall ne'er, I ween, find exit more. 

In each a slender meal was laid. 

Of roots, of water, and of bread : 

By each, in Benedictine dress. 

Two haggard monks stood motionless ; 

Who, holding high a blazing torch, 

Show'd the grim entrance of the porch : 

Reflecting back the smoky beam, 

The dark-red walls and arches gleam. 

Hewn stones and cement were display'd. 

And building tools in order laid. ..... 

And now that blind old Abbot rose, 

To speak the Chapter's doom. 
On those the wall was to enclose. 

Alive, within the tomb : 
But stopp'd, because that woful maid, 
Gathering her powers, to speak essay'd. 
Twice she essay'd, and twice in vain ; 
Her accents might no utterance gain : 
Naught but imperfect murmurs slip 
From her convulsed and quivering lip : 

'Twixt each attempt all was so still. 

You seem'd to hear a distant rill — 
'Twas ocean's swells and falls ; 

For though this vault of sin and fear 

Was to the sounding surge so near, 

A tempest there you scarce could hear, 
So massive were the walls. 
At length, an effort sent apart 
The blood that curdled at her heart. 

And light came to her eye, 
And colour dawn'd upon her cheek, 
Like that left on the Cheviot peak 

By Autumn's stormy sky ; 
And when her silence broke at length. 
Still as she spoke she gather'd strength, 

And arm'd herself to bear; — 
It was a fearful sight to see 
Such high resolve and constancy. 

In form so soft and fair. 
"I speak not to implore your grace ; 
Well know I for one minute's space 

Successless might I sue : 
Nor do I speak your prayers to gain ; 
For if a death of lingering pain 
To cleanse my sins be penance vain. 

Vain are your masses too. — 
I listen'd to a traitor's tale. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 67 


I left the convent and the veil ; 


Yet dread me, from my living tomb, 


For three long years I bow'd my pride, 


Ye vassal slaves of bloody Rome ! 


A horse-boy in his train to ride ; 


If Marmion's late remorse should wake, 


And well my folly's meed he gave, 


Full soon such vengeance will he take. 


Who forfeited, to be his slave, 


That you shall wish the fiery Dane 


All here, and all beyond the grave. 


Had rather been your guest again. 


He saw young Clara's face more fair, 


Behind, a darker hour ascends ! 


He knew her of broad lands the heir. 


The altars quake, the crosier bends, 


Forgot his vows, his faith forswore, 


The ire of a despotic king 


And Constance was beloved no more ! 


Rides forth upon destruction's wing. 


'Tis an old tale, and often told ; 


Then shall these vaults, so strong and deep, 


But, did my fate and wish agree, 


Burst open to the sea-winds' sweep: 


Ne'er had been read, in story old. 


Some traveller then shall find my bones, 


" Of maiden true betray'd for gold, 


Whitening amid disjointed stones, 


That loved, or was avenged like me ! 


And, ignorant of priests' cruelty, 


The king approved his favourite's aim ; 


Marvel such relics here should be." 


In vain a rival barr'd his claim. 


Fix'd was her look, and stern her air ; 


Whose fiiith with Clare's was plight, 


Back from her shoulders stream'd her hair ; 


For he attaints that rival's fame 


The locks that wont her brows to shade, 


With treason's charge — and on they came. 


Stared up erectly from her head ; 


In mortal lists to fight. 


Her figure seem'd to rise more high ; 


Their oaths are said, their prayers are pray'd. 


Her voice, despair's wild energy 


Their lances in the rest are laid. 


Had given a tone of prophecy. 


They meet in mortal shock ; 


Appall'd the astonish'd conclave sate; 


And hark ! the throng, with thundering cry, 


With stupid eyes, the men of fate 


Shout ' Marmion, Marmion !' to the sky, 


Gazed on the light inspired form. 


' De Wilton to the block !' 


And listen'd for the avenging slorm ; 


Say ye who preach. Heaven shall decide 


The judges felt the victim's dread ; 


When in the lists two champion's ride. 


No hand was moved, no word was said, 


Say, was Heaven's justice herel 


Till thus the abbot's doom was given. 


When, loyal in his love and fiith. 


Raising his sightless balls to heaven : — 


Wilton found overthrow or death. 


" Sister, let thy sorrows cease ; 


Beneath a traitor's spear 1 


Sinful brother, part in peace !" — 


How false the charge, how true he fell, 


From that dire dungeon, place of doom. 


This guilty packet best can tell" — 


Of execution too, and tomb, 


Then drew a packet from her breast. 


Paced forth the judges three; 


Paused, gather'd voice, and spoke the rest. 


Sorrow it were, and shame, to tell 


" Still was false Marmion's bridal stay'd ; 


The butcher-work that, there befell, 


To Whitby's convent fled the maid. 


When they had glided from the cell 


The hated match to shun. 


Of sip and misery. 


' Ho ! shifts she thus V King Henry cried. 


An hundred winding steps convey 


' Sir Marmion, she shall be thy bride, 


That conclave to the upper day ; 


If she were sworn a nun.' 


But ere they breathed the fresher air 


One way remain' d — the king's command 


They heard the shriekings of despair, 


Sent Marmion to the Scottish land : 


And many a stifled groan : 


I linger'd here, and rescue plann'd 


With speed their upward way they take, 


For Clara and for me : 


(Such speed as age and fear can make,) 


This catiff monk, for gold, did swear 


And cross'd themselves for terror's sake. 


He would to Whitby's shrine repair, 


As hurrying, tottering on. 


And, by his drugs, my rival fair 


Even in the vesper's heavenly tone, 


A saint in heaven should be. 


They seem'd to hear a dying groan, 


But ill the dastard kept his oath. 


And bade the passing knell to toll 


Whose cowardice has undone us both. 


For welfare of a parting soul. 


' And now my tongue the secret tells. 


Slow o'er the midnight wave it swung. 


' Not that remorse my bosom swells. 


Northumbrian rocks in answer rung; 


But to assure my soul that none 


To Warkworth cell the echoes roll'd. 


J Shall ever wed with Marmion. 
Had fortune my last hope betray'd, 


His beads the wakeful hermit told ; 


The Bamborough peasant raised his head, 


1 This packet, to the king convey'd. 


But slept ere half a prayer he said ; 


Had given him to the headsman's stroke, 
' Although my heart that instant broke. — 


So far was heard the mi^;lity knell. 


The stag sprung up on Cheviot Fell, 


/ Now men of death, work forth your will. 
For I can suffer and be still ; 


Spread his broad nostril to the wind. 


Then couch'd him down beside the hind. 


' And come he slow, or come he fast. 


And quaked among the mountain fern. 


j It is but Death who comes at last. 

j 


To hear that sound, so dull and stern. 



68 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



HUNTING SONG. 

Wakex, lords and ladies gay, 

On the mountain dawns the day ; 

All the jolly chase is here, 

With hawk, and horse, and hunting-spear 

Hounds are in their couples yelling. 

Hawks are whistling, horns are knejling, 

Merrily, merrily mingle they, 

" Waken, lords and ladies gay." 

Waken, lords and ladies gay, 

The mist has left the mountain gray, 

Springlets in the dawn are streaming. 

Diamonds on the brake are gleaming ; 

And foresters have busy been. 

To track the buck in thicket green ; 

Now we come to chant our lay, 

" Waken, lords and ladies gay." 

Waken, lords and ladies gay, 
To the green-wood haste away ; 
We can show you where he lies, 
Fleet of foot, and tall of size; 
We can show the marks he made. 
When 'gainst the oak his antlers fray'd ; 
You shall see him brought to bay, 
" Waken, lords and ladies gay." 

Louder, louder chant the lay, 

Waken, lords and ladies gay ! 

Tell them, youth, and mirth, and glee. 

Run a course as well as we. 

Time, stern huntsman ! who can balk. 

Staunch as hound, and fleet as hawk 1 

Think of this, and rise with day. 

Gentle lords and ladies gay. 



THE CYPRESS WREATH. 

O LAT)T, twine no wreath for me, 
Or twine it of the cypress tree ! 
Too lively glow the lilies light. 
The varnish'd holly 's all too bright ; 
The May-flower and the eglantine 
May shade a brow less sad than mine ; 
But, lady, weave no wreath for me, 
Or weave it of the cypress tree ! 

Let dimpled Mirth his temples twine 
With tendrils of the laughing vine ; 
The manly oak, the pensive yew, 
To patriot and to sage be due ; 
The myrtle bough bids lovers live. 
But that Matilda will not give ; 
Then, lady, twine no wreath for me, 
Or twine it of the cypress tree ! 

Let merry England proudly rear 

Her blended roses, bought so dear; 

Let Albin bind her bonnet blue 

With heath and hare-bell dipp'd in dew ; 

On favour'd Erin's crest be seen 

The flower she loves of emerald green — 



But, lady, twine no wreath for me, 
Or twine it of the cypress tree I 

Strike the wild harp, while maids prepare 
The ivy meet for minstrel's hair ; 
And, while his crown of laurel-leaves 
With bloody hand the victor weaves. 
Let the loud trump his triumph tell ; 
But when you hear the passing bell, 
Then, lady, twine a wreath for me. 
And twine it of the cypress tree. 

Yes ! twine for me the cypress bough ; 
But, O Matilda, twine not now I 
Stay till a few brief months are past. 
And I have look'd and loved my last ! 
When villagers my shroud bestrew 
With pansies, rosemary, and rue, — 
Then, lady, weave a wreath for me. 
And weave it of the cypress tree. 



LOCHINVAR. 

The young Lochinvar is come out of the west, 
Through all the wide border his steed was the best ; 
And save his good broadsword he weapon had none, 
He rode all unann'd, and he rode all alone. 
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war. 
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar. 

He stay'dnot for brake, and he stopp'd not for stone, 
He swam the Eske river where ford there was none; 
But, ere he alighted at Netherby gate. 
The bride had consented, the gallant came late : 
For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, 
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar. 

So boldly he enter'd the Netherby Hall, [and all : 
Among bridesmen, and kinsmen, and brothers, 
Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword, 
(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,) 
" O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war. 
Or to dance at our brid al, j^'o ung lord Lochinvar ? " — 

"I longwoo'd your daughter, my suit you denied; — 
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide — 
And now I am come with this lost love of mine 
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine. 
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far. 
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar." 

The bride kiss'd the goblet ; the knight took it up. 
He quaff 'd off" the wine, and he threw down the cup. 
She look'd down to blush, and she look'd up to sigh, 
With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye. 
He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar, — 
"Now tread we a measure !" said young Lochinvar. 

So stately his form, and so lovely her face, 
That never a hall such a galliard did grace ; 
While her mother did fret, and her father did fume ; 
And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and 

plume ; 
And the bridemaidens whisper'd, " 'T were better 

by far 
To have match'd our fair cousin with young 

Lochinvar." 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



69 



One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear, 
When they reach'd the hall-door, and the charger 

stood near ; 
So light to the croupe the fan- lady he swung, 
So light to the saddle before her he sprung ! 
" She is won ! we are gone, over bank, bush, and 

scaur, 
They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young 

Lochinvar. 

There was mounting 'mong Grfemes of the Nether- 

by clan ; 
Forsters, Fenvvicks, and Musgraves, they rode and 

they ran : 
There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee, 
But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see. 
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war, 
Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar 1 



FITZ-JAME3 AND RODERICK DHU. 

TiiEX each at once his falchion drew. 

Each on the ground his scabbard threw, 

Each look'd to sun, and stream, and plain, 

As what he ne'er might see again ; 

Then, foot, and point, and eye opposed, 

In dultious strife they darkly closed. — 

III fared it now with Roderick Dhu, 

That on the field his targe he threw. 

Whose brazen studs, and tough bull-hide, 

Had death so often turn'd aside ; 

For, train'd abroad his arms to wield, 

Fitz-James's blade was sword and shield : 

He practised every pass and ward. 

To feint, to thrust, to strike, to guard : 

While, less expert, though stronger far, 

The Gael maintain'd unequal war. 

Three times in closing strife they stood. 

And thrice the Saxon sword drank blood ; 

No stinted draught — no scanty tide ! 

The gushing flood the tartans dyed : 

Fierce Roderick felt the fatal drain. 

And shower'd his Mows like wintry rain; 

And as firm tower, or castle-roof. 

Against the winter shower is proof. 

The foe, invulnerable still, 

Foil'd his wild rage by steady skill ; 

Till, at advantage ta'en, his brand 

Forced Roderick's weapon from his hand, 

And backwards borne upon the lea, 

Brought the proud chieftain to his knee. 

" Now yield thee, or by him who made 

The world ! thy heart-blood dyes my blade."- 

" Thy threats, thy mercy, I defy ; 

Let recreant yield, who fears to die." — 

lAke adder darting from his coil — 

Like wolf that dashes through the toil — 

Like mountain-cat that guards her young, 

Full at Fitz-James's throat he sprung : 

Received, but rcck'd not of a wound. 

And lock'd his arms his foeman round. 

Now, gallant Saxon ! hold thy own ; 

No maiden's hand is round thee thrown ! 



That desperate grasp thy frame might feel 
Through bars of brass and triple steel. 
They tug, they strain — down, down they go,- 
The Gael above, Fitz-James below ! 
The chieftain's gripe his throat compress'd. 
His knee was planted in his breast; 
His clotted locks he backward threw, 
Across his brow his hand he drew. 
From blood and mist to clear his sight — 
Then gleam'd aloft his dagger bright; 
But hate and fury ill supplied 
The stream of life's exhausted tide; 
And all too late the advantage came 
To turn the odds of deadly game ; 
For while the dagger gleam'd on high, 
Reel'd soul and sense, reel'd brain and eye. 
Down came the blow — but in the heath 
The erring blade found bloodless sheath. — 
The struggling foe may now unclasp 
The fainting chief's relaxing grasp. 
Unwounded from the dreadful close. 
But breathless all, Fitz-James arose. 



A BRIDAL. 

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself hath said. 

This is my own, my native land ! 
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, 
As home his footsteps he hath turned, 

From wandering on a foreign strand ! 
If such there breathe, go, mark him well ; 
For him no minstrel raptures swell ; 
High though his titles, proud his name, 
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; 
Despite those titles, power, and pelf. 
The wretch, concentered all in self, 
Living, shall forfeit fair renown. 
And, doubly dying, shall go down 
To the vile dust from v\'hence he sprung. 
Unwept, unhonourcd, and unsung. 

O Caledonia ! stern and wild, - ■ 
Meet nurse for a poetic child ! 
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, 
Land of the mountain and the flood. 
Land of my sires ! what mortal hand 
Can e'er untie the filial band 
That knits me to thy rugged strand 1 
Still, as I view each well-known scene. 
Think what is now, and what hath been. 
Seems, as to me, of all bereft. 
Sole friends thy woods and streams were left ; 
And thus I love thcni better still. 
Even in extremity of ill. 
By Yarrow's stream still let me stray, 
Though none should guide my feeble way ; 
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break. 
Although it chill my wither'd cheek; 
Still lay my head by Teviot stone, 
Though there, forgotten and alone. 
The bard may draw his parting groan. 

Not scorn'd like me, to Branksome hall 
The minstrels came, at festive call ; 



70 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



Trooping they came, from near and far, 
The jovial priests of mirth and war ; 
Ahke for feast and fight prepared, 
Battle and banquet both they shared. 
Of late, before each martial clan, 
They blew their death-note in the van, 
But now, for every merry mate, 
Rose the portcullis' iron grate ; 
They sound the pipe, they strike the string, 
They dance, they revel, and they sing. 
Till the rude turrets shake and ring. 
Mp lists not at this tide declare 

The splendour of the spousal rite, 
How musler'd in the chapel fair 

Both maid and matron, squire and knight; 
Me lists not tell of owches rare. 
Of mantles green, and braided hair, 
And kirtles furred with miniver; 
What plumage waved the altar round, 
How spurs, and ringing chainlets, sound : 
And hard it were for bard to speak 
The changeful hue of Margaret's cheek, 
That lovely hue which comes and flies, 
As awe and shame alternate rise. 
Some bards have sung, the ladye high 
Chapel or altar came not nigh; 
Nor durst the rites of spousal grace. 
So much she feared each holy place. 
False slanders these : I trust right well 
She wrought not by forbidden spell : 
For mighty words and signs have power 
O'er sprites in planetary hoar : 
Yet scarce I praise their venturous part. 
Who tamper with such dangerous art. 
But this for faithful truth I say, 

The ladye by the altar stood, 
Of sable velvet her array. 

And on her head a crimson hood, 
With pearls embroidered and entwined, 
Guarded with gold, with ermine lined ; 
A merlin sat upon her wrist, 
Held by a leash of silken twist. 
The spousal rites were ended soon ; 
'Twas now the merry hour of noon. 
And in the lofty arched hall 
Was spread the gorgeous festival. 
Steward and squire, with heedful haste, 
Marshall'd the rank of every guest ; 
Pages, with ready blade, were there. 
The mighty meal to carve and share ; 
O'er capon, heron-shew, and crane, 
And princely peacock's gilded train. 
And o'er the boar-head, garnish'd brave, 
And cynget from St. Mary's wave. 
O'er ptarmigan and venison. 
The priest had spoke his benison. 
Tlien rose the riot and the din, 
Al)ove, beneath, without, within ! 
For, from the lofty balcony. 
Rung trumpet, shalm, and psaltery ; 
Their clanging bowls old warriors quaff'd. 
Loudly they spoke, and loudly laugh'd ; 
Whisper'd young knights, in tone more 

mild, 
To ladies fair, and ladies smiled. 



The hooded hawks, high perch'd on beam. 
The clamour join'd with whistling scream, 
And flapp'd their wings, and shook their bells, 
In concert vs'ith the stag-hounds' yells. 
Round go the flasks of ruddy wine. 
From Bourdeaux, Orleans, or the Rhine ; 
Their tasks the busy sewers ply. 
And all is mirth and revelry. 



THE LAST MINSTREL. 

The way was long, the wind was cold. 
The minstrel was infirm and old ; 
His wither'd cheek and tresses gray 
Seem'd to have known a better day ; 
The harp, his sole remaining joy, 
Was earned by an orphan boy. 
The last of all the bards was he. 
Who sung of border chivalry. 
For, well-a-day ! their date was fled. 
His tuneful brethren all were dead ; 
And he, neglected and oppress'd, 
Wish'd to be with them, and at rest. 
No more, on prancing palfrey borne. 
He caroU'd, light as lark at morn ; 
No longer, courted and caress'd. 
High placed in hall, a welcome guest, 
He pour'd, to lord and lady gay, 
The unpremeditated lay : 
Old times were changed, old manners gone ; 
A stranger fiU'd the Stuarts' throne ; 
The bigots of the iron time 
Had call'd his harmless art a crime. 
A wandering hari>er, scorn'd and poor, 
He begg'd his bread from door to door ; 
And tuned, to please a peasant's ear. 
The harp a king had loved to hear. 

He pass'd where Newark's stately tower 
Looks out from Yarrow's birchen bower : 
The minstrel gazed with wistful eye — 
No humbler resting-place was nigh. 
With hesitating step, at last. 
The embattled portal-arch he pass'd, 
Whose ponderous grate and massy bar 
Had oft roll'd back the tide of war, 
But never closed the iron door 
Against the desolate and poor. 
The duchess marked his weary pace. 
His timid mien, and reverend face. 
And bade her page the menials tell. 
That they should tend the old man well : 
For she had known adversity, 
Though born in such a high degree ; 
In pride of power, in beauty's bloom. 
Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb. 

When kindness had his wants supplied, 
And the old man was gratified. 
Began to rise his minstrel pride; 
And he began to talk anon 
Of good Earl Francis, dead and gone. 
And of Earl Walter, rest him God ! 
A braver ne'er to battle rode ; 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



71 



And how full many a tale he knew, 

Of the old warriors of Buccleuch ; 

And, would the noble duchess deign 

To listen to an old man's strain, 

Though stiff his hand, his voice though weak : 

He thought, even yet, the sooth to speak, 

That if she loved the harp to hear, 

He could make music to her ear. 

The humble boon was soon obtain'd ; 
The aged minstrel audience gained. 
But, when he reach'd the room of state, 
Where she with all her ladies sate. 
Perchance he wished his boon denied ; 
For, when to tune his harp he tried, 
His trembling hand had lost the ease. 
Which marks security to please ; 
And scenes, long past, of joy and pain, 
Came wilderinij o'er his aged brain — 
He tried to tune his harp in vain. 
The pitying duchess praised its chime, 
And gave him heart, and gave him time, 
Till every string's according glee 
Was blended into harmony. 
And then, he said, he would full fain 
He could recall an ancient strain, 
He never thought to sing again. 
It was not framed for village churls, 
But for high dames and mighty earls ; 
He had play'd it to King Charles ihe good, 
When he kept court in Holy rood ; 
And much he wish'd, yet fear'd, to try, 
The long-forgotten melody. 
Amid th(i strings his fingers stray'd. 
And an uncertain warbling made, 
And oft he shook his hoary head. 
But when he caught the measure wild. 
The old man raised his face, and smiled ; 
And lighten'd up his faded eye, 
With all a poet's ecstasy ! 
In varying cadence, soft or strong, 
He swept the sounding chords along : 
The present scene, the future lot. 
His toils, his wants, were all forgot: 
Cold diffidence and age's frost. 
In the full tide of song were lost ; 
Each blank, in faithless memory void. 
The poet's glowing thought supplied ; 
And while his harp responsive rung, 
'Twas thus the latest minstrel sung. 



THE TEVIOT. 

Sweet Teviot, by thy silver tide. 

The glaring bale-fires blaze no more ! 
No longer steel-clad warriors ride 

Along thy wild and willow'd shore ; 
Where'er thou wind'st, by dale or hill, 
All, all is peaceful, all is still, 

As if tliy waves, since Time was born. 
Since first they roll'd their way to Tweed, 
Had only hoard the shejjhprd's reed, 

Nor started at the bimlc-liorn! 
Unlike the ti<le of human time. 

Which, though it change in ceaseless flow. 



Retains each grief, retains each crime, 

Its earliest course was doom'd to know ; 
And, darker as it downward bears. 
Is stain'd with past and present tears ! 
Low as that tide has cbb'd with me, 
It still rellects to Memory's eye 
The hour, my brave, my only boy. 

Fell by the side of great Dundee. 
Why, when the volleying musket play'd 
Against the bloody Highland blade. 
Why was not I beside him laid ! — 
Enough — he died the death of fame; 
Enough — he died with conquering (Jrffime. 



HELLVELLYN. 

I cliwe'd the dark brow of the mighty Hellvellyn, 
Lakes and mountains beneath me gleam'd misty 
and wide ; 
All was still, save by fits when the eagle was yelling, 

And starting around me the echoes replied. 
On the right, Striden-edge round the Red-tarn was 

bending. 
And Catchedicam its left verge was defending. 
One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending, 
When I mark'd the sad spot where the wanderer 
had died. 

Dark green was the spot mid the brown meadow 
heather. 
Where the pilgrim of nature lay stretch'd in 
decay, — 
Like the course of an outcast abandon'd to weather, 
Till the mountain-winds wasted the tenantless 
clay. 
Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended. 
For faithful in death, his mute favourite attended. 
The much-loved remains of her master defended, 
And chased the hill-fox and the raven away. 

How long didst thou think that his silence was 
slumber 1 
When the wind waved his garment how oft 
didst thou start! 
How many long days and long weeks didst thou 
number. 
Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart 1 
And, oh ! was it meet, that — no requiem read o'er 

him. 
No mother to weep, and no friend to deplore him, 
And thou, little guardian, alone stretch'd before 
him — 
Unhonour'd the pilgrim from life should depart] 

When a prince to the fate of the peasant has 

yielded, 
The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted 

hall ; 
With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded. 
And pases stand mute by the canopied pall: 
Through the courts, at deep midnight, the torches 

are gloaming. 
In the proudly-arch'd chapel the banners ajre 

beaming. 



72 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



Far adown the long aisle sacred music is 

streaming, 
Lamenting a chief of the people should fall. 

But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature, 

To lay down tiiy head like the meek mountain 

lamb ; 

When, wilder'd he drops from son:e cliff huge in 

stature, 

And draws his last sob by the side of his dam. 

And more stately thy couch by this desert lake 

lying, 
Thy obsequies sung by the gray plover flying, 
With one faithful friend to witness thy dying. 
In the arms of Hellvellyn and Catchedicam. 



A SCENE IN BRANKSOME TOWER. 

Many a valiant knight is here ; 
But he, the chieftain of them all, 
His sword hangs rusting on the wall, 

Beside his broken spear ! 
Bards long shall tell. 
How Lord Waiter fell ! 
When startled burghers fled, afar, 
The furies of the Border war ; 
When the streets of high Dunedin 
Saw lances gleam, and falchions redden, 
And heard the slogan's deadly yell — 
Then the Chief of Branksome fell ! 

Can piety the discord heal, 

Or stanch the death-feud's enmity ? 
Can Christian lore, can patriot zeal, 

Can love of blessed charity 1 
No ! vainly to each holy shrine. 

In mutual pilgi-image, they drew; 
Implored, in vain, the grace divine 

For chiefs, their own red falchions slew, 
While Cessford owns the rule of Car, 

While Ettrick boasts the line of Scott, 
The slaughter'd chiefs, the mortal jar, ^ 
The havoc of the feudal war, 

Shall never, never be forgot ! 

In sorrow o'er Lord Walter's bier. 
The warlike foresters had bent; 
And many a flower and many a tear. 

Old Teviot's maids and matrons lent : 
But, o'er her warrior's bloody bier. 
The Layde dropp'd nor sigh nor tear! 
Vengeance, deep-brooding o'er the slain, 

Had lock'd the source of softer wo ; 
And burning pride, and high disdain, 

Forbade the rising tear to flow ; 
Until, amid his sorrowing clan. 

Her son lisp'd from the nurse's knee — 
"And, if I live to be a man, 

My father's death revenged shall be !" 
TJie7i fast the mother's tears did seek 
To dew the infant's kindling theek. 



FAREWELL TO THE MUSE. 

Enchaxtress, farewell ! w ho so oft has decoy 'd me. 
At the close of the evening through woodlands 
to roam. 
Where the forester, lated, with wonder espied me 
Explore the wild scenes he was quitting for home. 
Farewell ! and take with thee thy numbers wild 
speaking. 
The language alternate of rapture and wo; 
Oh ! none but some lover, whose heartstrings are 
breaking 
The pang that I feel at our parting can know. 

Each joy thou couldst double, and when there 
came sorrow. 
Or pale disappointment to darken my way, 
What voice was like thine, that could sing of to- 
morrow. 
Till forgot in the strain was the grief of to-day I 
But when friends drop around us in life's weary 
waning. 
The grief, queen of numbers, thou canst not 
assuage ; 
Nor the gradual estrangement of those yet re- 
maining. 
The languor of pain, and the chillness of age. 

'Twas thou that once taught me, in accents be- 
wailing. 

To sing how a warrior lay strctch'd on the plain ; 
And a maiden hung o'er him with aid unavailing. 

And held to his lips the cold goblet in vain : 
As vain those enchantments, queen of v^ild 
numbers. 

To a bard when the reign of his fancy is o'er. 
And the quick pulseof feeling in apathy slumbers, — 

Farewell then, enchantress ! I meet thee no more ! 



MELROSE ABBEY. 

If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright, 
Go visit it by the pale moonlight : 
For the gay beams of lightsome day 
Gild, hut to flout, the ruins gray. 
When the broken arches are black in night, 
And each shafted oriel glimmers white; 
When the cold light's uncertain shower 
Streams on the ruin'd central tower; 
When buttress and buttress, alternately, 
Seem framed of ebon and ivory ; 
When silver edges the imagery. 
And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die; 
When distant Tweed is heard to rave. 
And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave : 
Then go ! — but go alone the while — 
Then view St. David's ruin'd pile ! 
And, home returning, soothly swear, 
Was never scene so sad and fair ! 



JAMES MONTGOMERY. 



James Montgomery is the most popular of 
the religious poets who have written in Eng- 
land since the lime of Cowper, and he is 
more exclusively the poet of devotion than 
even the bard of Olney. Probably no writer 
is less indebted to a felicitous selection of 
subjects, since the themes of nearly all his 
longer productions are unpleasing and un- 
poetical ; but for half a century he has been 
slowly and constantly increasing in reputa- 
tion, and he has now a name which will not 
be forgotten, while taste and the religious 
sentiment exist together. 

Mr. Montgomery is the oldest son of a 
Moravian clergyman, and was born at Irvine, 
in Scotland, on the fourth of November, 1771. 
At a very early age he was placed by his 
parents, who had determined to educate him 
for the Moravian ministry, at one of the semi- 
naries of their church, where he remained ten 
years. At the end of this period, he decided 
not to study the profession to which he had 
been destined, and was in consequence placed 
with a shopkeeper in Yorkshire. Ill satisfied 
with his employment, he abandoned it at the 
end of a few months, and when but sixteen 
made his first appearance in London, with a 
manuscript volume of poems, of which he 
vainly endeavoured to procure the publication. 
In 1792 he went to Sheffield, where he was 
soon after engaged as a writer for a weekly 
gazette published by a INIr. Gales, and in 1794, 
on the flight of his employer from England to 
avoid a political prosecution, he himself be- 
came publisher and editor, and changing the 
name of the paper to "The Iris," conducted 
it with much taste, ability, and moderation. 
It was still, however, obnoxious to the govern- 
ment, and Mr. Montgomery was prosecuted 
for printing in it a song commemorative of the 
destruction of the Bastile, fined twenty pounds, 
and imprisoned three months in York Castle. 
On resuming his editorial duties he carefully 
avoided partisan politics, but after a brief pe- 
riod he was arrested for an offensive passage 
in an account which he gave of a riot in Shef- 
field, and was again imprisoned. It was during 



his second imprisonment, that he wrote his 

Prison Amusements, which appeared in 1797. 

From this time his poems followed each other 

in rapid succession. In 1805 he published the 

Ocean, in 180() the Wanderer of Switzerland, 

in 1810 the West Indies, in 1812 the World 

before the Flood, in 1819 Greenland, in 1822 

Songs of Zion, in 1827 the Pelican Island, and 

in 1835 A Poet's Portfolio, or Minor Poems. 

Beside these, he has written Songs to Foreign 

Music, and several smaller volumes of mis- 

1 cellaneous pieces. Mr. Montgomery had 

I published but few o-f these works before his 

I reputation was established as a poet of a high 

! order. The Wanderer of Switzerland was 

j severely criticised in the Edinburgh Review, 

'• and the West Indies was received by the critics 

with less fiivour than it merited. Greenland 

I was more popular than his earlier works; the 

j subject more in unison with his devotional 

! cast of thought; and the poem is full of 

graphic descriptions, and rich and varied 

imagery. The patient and earnest labours of 

the Moravian missionaries are described in it 

with a sympathetic and genuine enthusiasm. 

The minor poems of Mr. Montgomery, his 
little songs aqd cabinet pieces, will be the 
most frequently read, and the most generally 
admired. They have the antique simplicity 
of pions George Withers, a natural unaf- 
fected earnestness, joined to a pure and poe- 
tical diction, which will secure to them a 
permanent place in English literature. The 
character of his genius is essentially lyrical ; 
he has no dramatic power, and but little skill 
in narrative. His longest and most elaborate 
works, though they contain beautiful and 
touching reflections, and descriptions equally 
distinguished for minuteness, fidelity, and 
beauty, are without incident or method; but 
his shorter pieces are full of devotion to the 
Creator, sympathy with the suffering, and a 
cheerful, hopeful pliilosophy. 

Mr. Montgomery is now seventy-four years 
of age. He resides in Sheffield, where he is 
regarded by all classes with respect and af- 
fection. 

G 73 



74 



JAMES MONTGOMERY. 



THE GRAVE. 

There is a calm for those who weep, 

A rest for weary pilgrims found, 
They softly lie and sweetly sleep 

Low in the ground. 

The storm that wrecks the winter sky 
No more disturbs their deep repose. 
Than summer-evening's latest sigh 

That shuts the rose. 

I long to lay this painful head 

And aching heart beneath the soil. 
To slumber in that dreamless bed 

From all my toil. 

For misery stole me at my birth, 

And cast me helpless on the wild ! 
I perish ; — my mother Earth, 

Take home thy child. 

On thy dear lap these limbs reclined, 

Shall gently moulder into thee ; 
Nor leave one wretched trace behind 

Resembling me. 

Hark ! a strange sound affrights mine ear ; 

My pulse, — my brain runs wild, — I rave: 
Ah I who art thou whose voice I hear 1 

" I AM THE GRAVE. 

" The GftAVE, that never spake before, 

Hath found at length a tongue to chide : 
Oh listen ! I will speak no more ; — 

Be silent, pride! 

"Art thou a wretch of hope forlorn, 

The victim of consuming care ] 
Is thy distracted conscience torn 

By fell despair 1 

" Do foul misdeeds of former times 

Wring with remorse thy guilty breast 1 
And ghosts of unforgiven crimes 

Murder thy rest 1 

"Lash'd by the furies of the mind, 

From wrath and vengeance wouldst thou fleel 
Ah! think not, hope not, fool, to find 

A friend in me : 

" By all the terrors of the tomb, — 

Beyond the power of tongue to tell : 
By the dread secrets of my womb ; 

By death and hell. 

« I charge thee live ! repent and pray, 

In dust thine infamy deplore : 
There yet is mercy, — go thy way, 

And sin no more. 

" Art thou a WANnEUEn 1 — hast thou seen 
O'erwhelming tempests drown thy bark'? 
A shipwreck'd sufferer, hast thou been 

Misfortune's mark T 

"Art thou a mourner 1 — hast thou known 

The joy of innocent delights ; 
Endearing days for ever flown. 

And tranquil nights? 



" O LIVE ! — and deeply cherish still 

The sweet remembrance of the past : 
Rely on Heaven's unchanging will 

For peace at last. 

" Though long of winds and waves the sport, 

Condemn'd in wretchedness to roam : 
Live ! thou shalt reach a sheltering port, — 
A quiet home. 

"To FRIENDSHIP dldst thou trust thy fame. 

And was thy friend a deadly foe, — 
Who stole into thy breast, to aim 

A surer blow 1 

" Live ! — and repine not o'er his loss, — 

A loss unworthy to be told : 
Thou hast mistaken sordid dross 

For friendship's gbld. 

" Seek the true treasure, seldom found. 

Of power the fiercest griefs to calm ; 

And soothe the bosom's deepest wound 

With heavenly balm. 

"Did woman's charm thy youth beguile, — 

And did the fair one faithless prove] 
Hath she betray'd thee with a smile, 

And sold thy lovel 

" Live ! 'T was a false bewildering fire ; 

Too often love's insidious dart 
Thrills the fond soul with wild desire, — 

But kills the heart. 

" Thou yet shall know how sweet, how dear, 

To gaze on listening beauty's eye ; 
To ask, — and pause in hope and fear 

Till she reply. 

" A nobler flame shall warm thy breast, — 

A brighter maiden faithful prove ; 
Thy youth, thine age, shall yet be blest 

In woman's love. 

" Whate'er thy lot — whoe'er thou he, 

Confess thy folly, — kiss the rod ; 
And in thy chastening sorrows see 

The hand of God. 

" A bruised reed He will not break, — 

Afflictions all his children feel : 
He wounds them for his mercy's sake, — 

He wounds to heal. 

" Humbled beneath his mighty hand. 

Prostrate his Providence adore : 
'Tis done ! Arise ! He bids thee stand, 

To fall no more. 

" Now, traveller in the vale of tears. 

To realms of everlasting light. 
Through Time's dark wilderness of years 

Pursue thy flight. 

"There is a calm for those who weep, 

A rest for weary pilgrims found ; 
And while the mouldering ashes sleep 

Low in the ground. 



JAMES MONTGOMERY. 



75 



" The Soul, of origin divine, 

God's glorious image, freed from clay, 
In heaven's eternal sphere shall shine 

A star of day. 

" The SUN is but a spark of fire, — 

A transient meteor in the sky : 
The SOUL, immortal as its Sire, 

Shall never die !" 



THE PILLOW. 

The head that oft this pillow press'd, 
That aching head, is gone to rest ; 
Its little pleasures now no more, 
And all its mighty sorrows o'er, 
For ever, in the worm's dark bed, 
For ever sleeps that humble head ! 

My friend was young, the world was new ; 
The world was false, my friend was true ; 
Lowly his lot, his birth obscure. 
His fortune hard, my friend was poor; 
To wisdom he had no pretence, 
A child of suffering, not of sense ; 
For Nature never did impart 
A weaker or a warmer heart. 
His fervent soul, a soul of flame. 
Consumed its frail terrestrial frame ; 
That fire from Heaven so fiercely burn'd, 
That whence it came it soon return'd : 
And yet, O Pillow ! yet to me, 
My gentle friend survives in thee ; 
In thee, the partner of his bed. 
In thee, the widow of the dead. 

On Helicon's inspiring brink, 
Ere yet my friend had learn'd to think, 
Once as he pass'd the careless day 
Among the whispering reeds at play. 
The Muse of Sorrow vvander'd by ; 
Her pensive beauty fix'd his eye ; 
With sweet astonishment he smiled ; 
The Gipsy saw — she stole the child ; 
And soft on her ambrosial breast 
Sang the delighted babe to rest; 
Convey'd him to her inmost grove, 
And loved him with a mother's love. 
Awaking from his rosy nap, 
And gayly sporting on her lap, 
His wanton fingers o'er her lyre 
Twinkled like electric fire : 
Quick and quicker as they flew. 
Sweet and sweeter tones they drew ; 
Now a bolder hand he flings, 
And dives among the deepest strings ; 
Then forth the music brake like thunder ; 
Back he started, wild with wonder. 
The Muse of Sorrow wept for joy, 
And clasp'd and kiss'd her chosen boy. 

Ah ! then no more his smiling hours 
Were spent in childhood's Eden-bowers ; 
The fall from infant-innocence, 
The fall to knowledge drives us thence : 
O Knovvledire ! worthless as the price, 
Bought with the loss of Paradise. 
As happy ignorance declined, 



And reason rose upon his mind, 
Romantic hopes and fond desires 
(Sparks of the soul's immortal fires) 
Kindled within his breast the rage 
To breathe through every future age, 
To clasp the flitting shade of fame. 
To build an everlasting name, 
O'erleap the narrow vulgar span. 
And live beyond the life of man. 

Then Nature's charms his heart possess'd, 
And Nature's glory fill'd, his breast: 
The sweet spring-morning's infant rays. 
Meridian summer's youthful blaze, 
Maturer autumn's evening mild, 
And hoary winter's midnight wild. 
Awoke his eye, inspired his tongue ; 
For every scene he loved, he sung. 
Rude were his songs, and simple truth. 
Till boyhood blossom'd into youth ; 
Then nobler themes his fancy fired, 
To bolder fights his soul asjiired ; 
And as the new moon's opening eye 
Broadens and brightens throui'h the sky. 
From the dim streak of western light 
To the full orb that rules the night; 
Thus, gathering lustre in its race. 
And shining through unbounded space. 
From earth to heaven his genius soar'd, 
Time and eternity explored. 
And hail'd where'er its footsteps trod, 
In Nature's temple. Nature's God : 
Or pierced the human breast, to scan 
The hidden majesty of man ; 
Man's hidden weakness too descried, 
His glory, grandeur, meanness, pride : 
Pursued along their erring course 
The streams of passion to their source : 
Or in the mind's creation sought 
New stars of fancy, worlds of thought. 
— Yet still through all his strains would flow 
A tone of uncomplaining wo. 
Kind as the tear in Pity's eye. 
Soft as the slumbering infant's sigh, 
So sweetly, exquisitely wild. 
It spake the Muse of Sorrow's child. 

Pillow ! then, when light withdrew, 
To thee the fond enthusiast flew ; 
On thee, in pensive mood reclined. 
He pour'd his contemplative mind, 
Till o'er his eyes with mild control 
Sleep like a soft enchantment stole, 
Charm'd into life his airy schemes, 
And realized his waking dreams. 

Soon from those waking dreams he woke, 
The fairy spell of fancy broke ; 
In vain he breathed a soul of fire 
Thl-ough every chord that strung his lyre. 
No friendly echo cheer'd his tongue; 
Amidst the wilderness he sung; 
Louder and bolder bards were crown'd, 
M'^hose dissonance his music drown'd ; 
The public ear, the public voice. 
Despised his song, denied his choice, 
Denied a name, — a life in death. 
Denied — a bubble and a breath. 



76 



JAMES MONTGOMERY. 



Stript of his fondest, dearest claim, 
And disinherited of fiune. 
To thee, O Pillow ! thee ah)ne, 
He made his silent anguish known ; 
His haughty spirit scorn'd tlie blow 
That laid his hii;h ambition low ; 
But, ah ! his looks assumed in vain 
A cold inell'able disdain. 
While deep he cherish'd in his breast 
The scorpion that consumed his rest. 

Yet other secret griefs had he, 
O Pillow ! only told to thee ; 
Say, did not hopeless love intrude 
On his poor bosom's solitude ] 
Perhaps on thy soft lap reclined, 
In dreams the cruel Fair was kind, 
That more intensely he might know 
The bitterness of waking wo. 

Whate'er those pangs from nie conceal'd, 
To thee in midnight groans reveal'd, 
They stung remembrance to despair ; 
" A woujided spirit who can bear 1" 
Meanwhile disease, with slow decay, 
Moulder'd his feeble frame away ; 
And as his evening sun declined, 
The shadows deepen'd o'er his mind. 
What doubts and terrors then possess'd 
The dark dominion of his breast ! 
How did delirious fancy dwell 
On madness, suicide, and hell ! 
There was on earth no power to save 
— But, as he shudder'd o'er the grave, 
He saw from realms of light descend 
The friend of him who has no friend. 
Religion ! — Her almighty breath 
Rebuked the winds and waves of death ; 
She bade the storm of phrensy cease, 
And smiled a calm, and whisper 'd peace : 
Amidst that calm of sweet repose, 
To heaven his gentle spirit rose. 



FRIENDS. 

Friend after friend departs; 

Who hath not lost a friend ? 
There is no union here of hearts, 

That finds not here an end ; 
Were this frail world our only rest, 
Living, or dying, none were blest. 

Beyond the flight of Time. 

Beyond this vale of death, 
There surely is some blessed clime 

Where life is not a breath. 
Nor life's affections transient fire. 
Whose sparks fly upward to expire. 

There is a world above. 

Where parting is unknown — 

A whole eternity of lov;^, 
Form'd for the good alone ; 

And faith beholds the dying here 

Translated to that happier sphere. 



Thus star by star declines, 

'i'ill all are passed away, — 
As morning high and higher shines 

To {)ure and perfect day : 
Nor sink those stars in empty night, 
— They hide themselves in heaven's own light. 



DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF 
AMERICA. 

Then first Columbus, with the mighty hand 
Of grasping genius, weigh'd the sea and land ; 
The floods o'erbalanced : — where the tide of light. 
Day after day, roll'd down the gulf of night. 
There scein'd one waste of waters: — long in vain 
His spirit brooded o'er the Atlantic main; 
When sudden, as creation burst from nought, 
Sprang a new world through his stupendousthought. 
Light, order, beauty ! — While his mind explored 
The unveiling mystery, his heart adored ; 
Where'er sublime imagination trod. 
He heard the voice, he saw the face, of God. 

The winds were prosperous, and the billows bore 
The brave adventurer to the promised shore; 
Far in the west, array'd in purple light, 
Dawn'd the new world on his enraptured sight: 
Not Adam, loosen'd from the encumbering earth, 
Waked by the breath of God to instant birth. 
With sv^'ceter, v\'ilder wonder gazed around, 
When life within, and light without, he found ; 
When, all creation rushing o'er his soul, [whole. 
He seem'd to live and breathe throughout the 
So felt Columbus, when, divinely fair. 
At the last look of resolute despair. 
The Hesperian isles, from distance dimly blue. 
With gradual beauty open'd on his view. 
In that proud moment, his transported mind 
The morning and the evening worlds combined. 
And made the sea, that sunder'd them before, 
A bond of peace, uniting shore to shore. 

Vain, visionary hope ! rapacious Spain 
FoUow'd her hero's triumph o'er the main. 
Her hardy sons in fields of battle tried. 
Where Moor and Christian desperately died. 
A rabid race, fanatically bold. 
And steel'd to cruelty by lust of gold, 
Traversed the waves, the unknown world explored. 
The cross their standard, but their faith the sword ; 
Their steps were graves ; o'er prostrate realms 
they trod ; [God. 

They worshipp'd Mammon while they vow'd to 

Let nobler bards in loftier numbers tell 
How Cortez conquer'd, Montezuma fell ; 
How fierce Pizarro's ruffian arm o'erthrew 
The sun's resplendent empire in Peru ; 
How, like a prophet, old Las Casas stood. 
And raised his voice against a sea of blood. 
Whose chilling waves recoil'd, while he foretold 
His country's ruin by avenging gold. 
— That gold, for which unpitied Indians fell. 
That gold, at once the snare and scourge of hell, 
Thenceforth by righteous Heaven was doom'd to 
Unvningled curses on the spoiler's head; [shed 
For gold the Spaniard cast his soul away — 
His gold and he were every nation's prey. 



JAMES MONTGOMERY. 



77 



YOUTH RENEWED. 

SpniNG-FLowEKs, spHng-birds, spring-breezea 

Are felt, and heard, and seen; 
Light trembling- transport seizes 

My heart, — with sighs between : 
These old enchantments fill the mind 
With scenes and seasons far behind ; 
Childhood, its smiles and tears, 
Youth, with its flush of years, • 
Its morning-clouds and dewj' prime, 
More exquisitely touch'd by Time. 

Fancies again are springing, 

Like May-flowers in the vales ; 
While hopes, long lost, are singing, 

From thorns, like nightingales ; 
And kindly spirits stir my blood, 
Like vernal airs, that curl the flood : 
There falls to manhood's lot 
A joy, which youth has not. 
A dream more beautiful than truth, 
— Returning Spring, renewing Youth. 

Thus sweetly to surrender 

The present for the past ; 
In sprightly mood, yet tender, 

Jjife's burden down to cast, 
— This is to taste, from stage to stage, 
Youth on the lees refined by age : 
Like wine well kept and long, 
Heady, not harsh, nor strong, 
With every annual cuj), is quaff' d 
A richer, purer, mellower draught. 



THE COMMON LOT. 

OxcK in the flight of ages past. 

There lived a Man : — and who was he T 
— Mortal ! howe'er thy lot be cast, 

That Man resembled thee. 
Unknown the region of his birth, 

The land in which he died unknown : 
His name has perish'd from the earth, 

This truth survives alone : — 
That joy and grief, and hope and fear. 

Alternate triumph'd in his breast: 
His bliss and wo, — a smile, a tear ! 

— Oblivion hides the rest. 

The bounding pulse, the languid limb — 
The changing spirits' rise and fall ; 

We know that these were felt by him 

, For these are felt by all. 

He suffer'd, — but his pangs are o'er; 
Enjoy'd, — but his delights are fled ; 

Ha'l friends, — his friends are now no more ; 
And foes, — his foes are dead. 

He loved, — but whom he loved, the grave 
Hath lost in its unconscious womb, 

Oh she was fair — but naught could save 
Her beauty from the tomb. 

He saw whatever thou hast seen ; 

Encounter'd all that troubles thee; 
lie was — whatever thou hast been ; 

He is — what thou shall be. 



The rolling seasons, day and night, 

Sun, moon, and stars, the earth and main, 

Erewhile his portion, life and light 
To him exist in vain. 

The clouds and sunbeams, o'er his eye 

That once their shades and glory threw, 
Have left in yonder silent i^ky 

No vestige where they flew. 
The annals of the human race. 

Their ruins, since the world began 
Of HIM aflbrd no other trace 

Tlian this, — There lived a Man! 



THE STRANGER AND HIS FRIEND. 

A POOR wayfaring man of grief 

Has often cross'd me on my way, 
Who sued so humbly for relief. 

That I could never answer, " Nay :" 
I had not power to ask his name. 
Whither he went, or whence he came. 
Yet was there something in his eye. 
That won my love, I knew not why. 
Once, when my scanty meal was spread, 

He enter'd ; not a word he spake ; — 
Just perishing for want of bread ; 

I gave him all ; he blessed it, brake, 
A nd ate, — but gave me part again ; 
Mine was an Angel's portion then. 
For while I fed with eager haste, 
That crust was manna to my taste. 

I spied him, where a fountain burst 

Clear from the rock ; his strength was gone; 

The heedless water mock'd his thirst. 
He heard it, saw it hurrying on ; 

I ran to raise the sufferer up ; 

Thrice from the stream he drain'd my cup, 

Dipt and return'd it running o'er; 

f drank, and never thirsted more. 

'Twas night; the floods were out; it blew 

A winter hurricane aloof; 
I heard his voice abroad, and flew 

To bid him welcome to my roof; 
I warm'd, I clothed, I checr'd my guest. 
Laid him on my own couch to rest; 
Then made the hearth my bed, and seem'd 
In Eden's garden while I dream'd. 
Stript, wounded, beaten, nigh to death, 

I found him by the highway side ; 
I roused his pulse, brought back his breath. 

Revived his spirit, and supplied 
Wine, oil, refreshment; he was heal'd ; 
I had myself a wound conceal'd ; 
But from that hour forgot the smart. 
And peace bound up my broken heart. 
In prison I saw him next, condemn'd 

To meet a traitor's doom at morn ; 
The tide of lying tongues I stcmm'd. 

And honour'd him midst shame and scorn : 
My friendship's utmost zeal to try, 
He ask'd, if I for him would die ; 
The flesh was weak, my blood ran chill, 
But the free spirit cried, '• I will." 



78 JAMES MONTGOMERY. 


Then in a moment to my view 


Whether the birds' wild minstrelsy 




The stranger darted from disguise, 


Awoke her here at dawn ; 




The tokens in his hands I knew, 


Whether beneath its youthful shade, 




My Saviour stood before mine eyes : 


At noon, in infancy she play'd : 




He spake ; and my poor name He named ; 


— If from the oak no answer come, 




" Of me thou hast not been ashamed : 


Of her all oracles are dumb. 




These deeds shall thy memorial be; 
Fear not, thou didst them unto Me." 


The dead are like the stars by day ; 

— Withdrawn from mortal eye. 
But not extinct, they hold their way, 

In glory through the sky : 






INCOGNITA. 


Spirits, from bondage thus set free. 
Vanish amidst immensity. 










Where human thought, like human sight, 




Imagf. of one, who lived of yore ! 


Fails to pursue iheir trackless flight. 




Hail to that lovely mien. 




Once quick and conscious ; — now no more 


Somewhere within created space, 




On land or ocean seen ! 


Could I explore that round. 




Were all earth's breathing forms to pass 


In bliss, or wo, there is a place, 




Before me in Agrippa's glass, 


Where she might still be found ; 




Many as fair as thou might be. 


And oh ! unless those eyes deceive, 




But oh ! not one, — not one like thee. 


I may, I must, I will believe. 




Thou art no child of fancy ; — thou 


That she, whose charms so meekly glow, 
In what she only seem'd below — 


I 


The very look dost wear. 




That gave enchantment to a brow 


An angel in that glorious realm, 




Wreath'd with luxuriant hair ; 


Where God himself is king ; 




Lips of morn embathed in dew. 


— But awe and fear, that overwhelm 




And eyes of evening's starry blue ; 


Presumption, check my wing; 




Of all who e'er enjoy'd the sun, 


Nor dare imagination look 




Thou art the image of but one. 


Upon the symbols of that book. 

Wherein eternity enrolls 

The judgment on departed souls. 




And who was she, in virgin prime, 
And May of womanhood. 




Whose roses here, unpluck'd by time, 


Of her of whom these pictured lines 




In shadowy tints have stood; 


A faint resemblance form ; 




While many a winter's withering blast 


— Fair as the second rainbow shines 




Hath o'er the dark cold chamber pass'd, 


Aloof amid the storm ; 




In v.'hich her once-resplendent form 


Of her this " shadow of a shade" 




Slumber'd to dust beneath the storm ] 


Like its original must fade. 




Of gentle blood ; — upon her birth 
Consenting planets smiled. 


And she, forgotten when unseen. 




Shall be as if she ne'er had been. 




And she had seen those days of mirth, 


Ah ! then, perchance, this dieaming strain, 




That frolic round the child; 


Of all that e'er I sung. 




To bridal bloom her strength had sprung. 


A lorn memorial may remain, 




Behold her beautiful and young ! 


When silent lies my tongue, 




Lives there a record, which hath told, 


When shot the meteor of my fame. 




That she was wedded, widow'd, old 1 


Lost the vain echo of my name. 




How long her date, 'twere vain to guess : 


This leaf, this fallen leaf, may be 




The pencil's cunning art 


The only trace of her and me. 




Can but a single glance express. 


With one who lived of old, my song 




One motion of the heart ; 


In lowly cadence rose ; 




A smile, a blush, — a transient grace 


To one who is unborn, belong 




Of air, and attitude, and face — 


The accents of its close : 


• 


One passion's changing colour mix ; 


Ages to come, with courteous ear. 




One moment's flight for ages fix. 


Some youth my warning voice may hear ; 




Her joys and griefs, alike in vain. 


And voices from the dead should be 




Would fancy here recall ; 


The warnings of eternity. 




Her throbs of ecstasy or pain 


When these weak lines thy presence greet, 




Luird in oblivion all ; 


Reader ! if I am blest, 




With her, methinks, life's little hour 


Again, as spirits, may we meet 




Pass'd like the fragrance of a flower, 


In glory and in rest : 




That leaves upon the vernal wind 


If not, — and I have lost my way, — 




Sweetness we ne'er again may find. 


Here part we ; — go not thou astray ; 




Where dwelt she? — Ask yon aged tree, 


No tomb, no verse my story tell ! 




Whose boughs embower the lawn, 


Once, and for ever, fare thee well. 








.%;-^ ^:^ 




DTft. 



JAMES MONTGOMERY. 



79 



SPEED THE PROW. 

Not tlie ship that swiftest saileth, 
But which longest holds her way 

Onward, onward, never faileth, 
Ktorm and calm, to win the day ; 

Earliest she the haven gains, 

Which the hardest stress sustains. 

O'er life's ocean, wide and pathless, 
Thus would I with patience steer ; 

No vain hope of journeying scathlcss, 
No proud hoast to face down fear; 

Bark or bright his Providence, 

Trust in God be my defence. 

Time there was, — 't is so no longer, — 

When I crowded every sail, 
Biattled with the waves, and stronger 

Grew, as stronger grew the gale ; 
But my strength sunk with the wind, 
And the sea lay dead behind. 

There my bark had founder'd surely, 

But a power invisible 
Breathed upon me ; — then securely. 

Borne along the gradual swell. 
Helm a!id shrouds, and heart renew'd, 
I my humbler course pursued. 

Now, though evening shadows blacken, 
And no star comes through the gloom, 

On 1 move, nor will I slacken 

Sail, though verging towards the tomb : 

Bright beyond, — on heaven's high strand, 

Lo, the lighthouse ! — land, land, land ! 

Cloud and sunshine, wind and weather, 
Sense and sight are fleeing fast ; 

Time and tide must fail together. 
Life and death will soon be past ; 

But where day's last spark declines, 

Glory everlasting shines. 



RECLUSE. 

A FOUNTAIN issuing into light 

Before a marble palace, threw 
To heaven its column, pure and bright. 

Returning thence in showers of dew ; 
But soon a humbler course it took. 
And glid away a nameless brook. 

Flowers on its grassy margin sprang, 
Flies o'er its eddying surface play'd, 

Birds midst the alder-branches sang. 

Flocks through the verdant meadows stray 'd 

The weary there lay down to rest, 

And there the halcyon built her nest. 

'Twas beautiful, to stand and watch 
The fountain's crystal turn to gems, 

And from the sky such colours catch. 
As if 'twere raining diadems; 

Yet all was cold and curious art. 

That charm'd the eye, but miss'd the heart. 



Dearer to me the little stream. 

Whose unimprison'd waters run. 
Wild as the changes of a dream. 

By rock and glen, through shade and sun ; 
Its lovely links had power lo bind 
In welcome chains my wandering mind. 

So thought I, when I saw the face. 

By happy portraiture reveafd, 
Of one, adorn'd with every grace, 

— Her name and date from me conceal'd, 
But not her story ; — she had been 
The pride of many a splendid scene. 

She cast her glory round a court. 

And frolic'd in the gayest ring, 
Where fashion's high-born minions sport. 

Like sparkling fire-fiies on the wing ; 
But thence, when love had touch'd her soul. 
To nature and to truth she stole. 

From din, and pageantry, and strife. 

Midst woods and mountains, vales and plains, 

She treads the paths of lowly life. 
Yet in a bosom-circle reigns. 

No fountain scattering diamond showers. 

But the sweet streamlet watering flowers. 



THE FIELD OF THE WORLD. 

Sow in the morn thy seed. 

At eve hold not thine hand ; 
To doubt and fi'ar give thou no heed. 
Broad-cast it o'er the land. 

Beside all waters sow. 

The highway furrows stock. 

Drop it where thorns and thistles grow, 
Scatter it on the rock. 

The good, the fruitful ground. 
Expect not here nor there ; 

O'er hill and dale, by plots, 't is found ; 
Go forth, then, everywhere. 

Thou know'st not which may thrive. 

The late or early sown : 
Grace keeps the precious germs alive, 

When and wherever strown. 

And duly shall appear. 

In verdure, beauty, strength. 

The tender blade, the stalk, the ear. 
And the full corn at length. 

Thou canst not toil in vain ; 

Cold, heat, and moist, and dry, 
Shall foster and mature the grain. 

For garners in the sky. 

Thence, when the glorious end, 

The day of God is come, 
The angel-reapers shall descend. 

And heaven cry — "Harvest home." 



JAMES HOGG. 



The Ettrick Shepherd was born in Selkirk- 
shire in Scotland, on the twenty-fifth of Jan- 
nary, 1772. His forefathers for five centuries 
had pursued the same humble calling among 
the solitudes of the Ettrick and the Yarrow, 
and when but seven years of age, the destined 
poet was compelled to earn his own bread by 
herding the cows of a neighbouring farmer. 
He had therefore no opportunity to acquire the 
ordinary education of the Scottish peasant. 
Of all the bards of his country, he was the 
only one really self-instructed. Burns, com- 
pared with Hogg, had the accomplishments of 
a gentleman. He was taught to read, and he 
wrote a clear hand. But the subject of our 
biography, was in his twentieth year before he 
learned the alphabet. Knowing by rote the 
words of ballads he had heard his mother sing, 
in his long leisure on the hills he compared 
them with the printed pages, and by such 
slow process, advanced until " the hardest 
Scripture names could scarcely daunt him." 
The rough but forcible stanzas beginning 

" My name is Donald M Donald, 
I live in the Highlands sae graiid," 

were sung throughout the empire before their 
author could distinguish a printed copy of 
them from a leaf of Blackstone. About the 
year 1802, he went to Edinburgh with a flock 
of sheep, for the disposal of which he was 
obliged to wait a few days in town. He could 
now write ; he had acquired some local reputa- 
tion by his traditionary songs and ballads ; and 
he determined to have a small volume of them 
printed. He succeeded ; the collection, which 
in his memoirs he declares was " extraordinar' 
stupit," attracted the attention of Scott and 
others in the metropolis, and increased the 
consideration with which the shepherd was 
regarded by his class. It was not successful 
in a pecuniary point of view ; but he was 
ambitious and undaunted ; he soon had ready 
a second volume, for which Constable paid 
him a hundred and fifty pounds, and with this 
amount, and another hundred received for a 
treatise on the management of sheep, he 
deemed himself a rich man. He unwisely 



settled as a tenant on a large farm ; in three 
years was penniless, and went to Edinburgh 
to pursue the business of authorship. His 
first attempt was an unsalable book of verses ; 
his second a weekly newspaper, which was 
sustained for more than a year ; and when 
they failed, and his town fliends began to 
desert him, he retired to a quiet old house 
in the suburbs, and wrote "The Queen's 
Wake," which surprised his acquaintances, 
and established on a firm basis his reputation 
as a poet. Removing once more into the 
denser portion of the city, he took up his 
quarters at the little tavern made famous after- 
ward as the scene of the " Noctes Ambrosia- 
nae," where he continued to reside for many 
years. He wrote the " Witch of Fife," 
" Queen Hynde," " Mador of the Moor," the 
" Pilgrims of the Sun," and otlier poems, 
and several volumes of tales and sketches, of 
various merit, besides his contributions to 
" Blackwood's Magazine," of which he was 
one of the principal founders. 

This world-renowned periodical had been 
established by Thomas Pringle and a Mr. 
Cleghorn, who, disagreeing with the pub- 
lisher, set up a rival under the auspices of 
Constable. Blackwood engaged Wilson, 
Hogg, and a few other writers, and continued 
his miscellany with such spirit and ability, 
that it soon acquired a vast circulation. The 
'• Noctes Ambrosianae," constituted the most 
remarkable series of papers ever printed in a 
periodical, and instead of being merely in- 
vented, as may have been supposed, were for 
a considerable period adaptations of what 
actually took place at Hogg's lodgings. 

Among the Shepherd's various literary pro- 
ductions not before mentioned, were a com- 
pilation of " .Tacobite Relics," and two novels 
entitled "The Three Perils of Man," and 
"The Three Perils of Woman," published by 
Longman, for which the author received some 
two hundred and fifty pounds. 

Hogg was married in 1823, and embarking 
soon afterward in too extensive farming ope- 
rations, he lost the money he had acquired by 



JAMES HOGG. 



81 



his literary labours. He laughed at misfor- 
tunes while he alone was a sufferer, but he 
could ill bear the presence of poverty in the 
home of his family. He visited London in 
1833, for the first and only time, and like every 
stranger of distinction was cordially welcomed 
in the higher circles as well as by all literary 
men; but he returned even poorer than he 
went, and at the end of two years, — on the 
twenty-first of November, 1835, — he died. 

He was a frank, generous, simple-hearted 
man; vain, indeed, of his abilities, but never 
unwilling to recognise genius in others. 



When SouTHEV visited Scotland in 1820, he 
remarked to Mr. Telford, his companion, 
that there was " one distinguished individual 
whom he would wish to see again — the 
Ettrick Shepherd, who," said he, " is alto- 
gether an extraordinary being, a character 
such as will not appear twice in five centuries, 
and differing most remarkably from Burns 
and all other self-taught writers." He ad- 
mired "his peculiar and innate power, of 
which there are ample evidences in all his 
poetical works, however defective they may 
be as to the accomplishment of art." 



KILMENY. 

BoNXT KiLMENr gaed up the glen ; 
But it wasna to meet Duneira's men, 
Nor the rosy monk of the isle to see, 
For Kihneny was pure as pure could be. 
It was only to hear the yorhn sing, 
And j)u' the cress-flower round the spring; 
The scarlet hypp and the hindberrye, 
And the nut that hangs frae the hazel-tree: 
For Kilnieny was pure as pure could be. 
But lang may her miiiny look o'er the wa'. 
And lang may she seek i' the green-wood shaw ; 
Lang the laird of Duneira blame, 
And lang, lang greet or Kilmeny come hame 

When many a day had come and fled, 
When grief grew calm, and hope was dead, 
When mass for Kilmeny's soul had been sung, 
When the bedes-man had pray'd, and the deadbell 

rung, 
Late, late in a gloamin, when all was still. 
When the fringe was red on the westlin hill, 
The wood was sere, the moon i' the wane, 
The reek o' the cot hung over the plain, 
Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane • 
When the ingle lowed with an eiry leme, 
Late, late in the gloaming Kilmeny came hame ! 

" Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been 1 
Lang hae we sought baith holt and dean ; 
By linn, by ford, and green-wood tree, 
Yet you are halesome and fair to see. 
Where gat you that joup o' the lily sheen 1 
That bonny snood of the birk sae green 7 
And these roses, the fairest that ever were seen 1 
Kihneny, Kihneny, where have you beenl" 

Kilmeny look'd up with a lovely grace, 
But nae smile was seen on Kilmeny's face ; 
As still was her look, and as still was her ee. 
As the stillness that lay on the emerant lea, 
Or the mist that sleeps on a waveless sea. 
For Kilmeny had been she knew not where, 
And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare ; 
Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew, 
Where the rain never fell, and the wind never 

blew. 
But it seem'd as the harp of the sky had rung, 
And the airs of heaven play'd round her tongue, 
11 



When she spake of the lovely forms she had seen, 

And a land where sin had never been ; 

A land of love, and a land of light, 

Withouten sun, or moon, or night: 

Where the river svva'd a living stream. 

And the light a pure celestial beam : 

The land of vision it would seem, 

A still, an everlasting dream 

And oh, her beauty was fair to see, 
But still and steadfast was her ee ! 
Such beauty bard may never declare, 
For there was no pride nor passion there ; 
And the soft desire of maiden's ecn 
In that mild face could never be seen. 
Her seymar was the lily flower, 
And her cheek the moss-rose in the shower; 
And her voice like the distant melodye, 
That floats along the twilight sea. 
But she loved to raike the lanely glen. 
And keep'd afar frae the haunts of men : 
Her holy hymns unheard to sing, 
To suck the flowers, and drnik the spring. 
But, wherever her peaceful form appear'd. 
The wild beasts of the hill were cheer'd ; 
The wolf play'd blithely round the field, 
The lordly bison low'd and knecl'd ; 
The dun deer woo'd with manner bland, 
And cower'd aneath her lily hand. 
And when at even the woodlands rung, 
When hymns of other worlds she sung 
In ecstasy of sweet devotion, 
Oh, then the glen was all in motion. 
The wild beasts of the forest came. 
Broke from their bughts and faulds the tame, 
And goved around charm'd and amazed ; 
Even the dull cattle croon'd and gazed, 
And murmur'd and look'd with anxious pain 
For something the mystery to explain. 
The buzzard came with the thristle-cock ; 
The corby left her houf in the rock ; 
The blackbird alang wi' the eagle flew ; 
The hind came tripping o'er the dew ; 
The wolf and the kid their raike began. 
And the toJ, and the lamb, and the leveret ran; 
The hawk and the hern attour them hung, 
And the merl and the mavis forhooy'd their young; 
And all in a peaceful ring were hurl'd : 
It was like an eve in a sinless world ! 



82 



JAMES HOGG. 



THE BROKEN HEART. 

Now lock my chamber-door, father, 

And say you left me sleeping ; 
But never tell my step-mother 

Of all this bitter weeping. 
No earthly sleep can ease my smart, 

Or even awhile reprieve it ; 
For there 's a pang at my young heart 

That never more can leave it ! 

Oh, let me lie, and weep my fill 

O'er wounds that heal can never; 
And oh, kind Heaven ! were it thy will, 

To close these eyes for ever . 
For how can maid's affections dear 

Recall her love unshaken 1 
Or how can heart of maiden bear 

To know that heart forsaken 1 

Oh, why should vows so fondly made, 

Be broken ere the morrow — 
To one who loved as never maid 

Loved in this world of sorrow ! 
The look of scorn I cannot bi'ave, 

Nor pitj's eye more dreary ; 
A quiet sleep within the grave 

Is all for which I weary ! 

Farewell, dear Yarrow's mountains green. 

And banks of broom so yellow ! 
Too happy has this bosom been 

Within your arbours mellow. 
That happiness is fled for ay. 

And all is dark desponding — 
Save in the opening gates of day, 

And the dear home beyond them ! 



THE SKYLARK. 

Bird of the wilderness, 

Blithesome and cumberless, 
Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea ! 

Emblem of happiness. 

Blest is thy dwelling-place — 
Oh to abide in the desert with thee ! 

Wild is thy lay, and loud. 

Far in the downy cloud. 
Love gives it energy, love gave it birth 

Where, on thy dewy wing. 

Where art thou journeying ! 
Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth. 

O'er fell and fountain sheen. 

O'er moor and mountain green. 
O'er the red streamer that heralds the day, 

Over the cloudlet dim, 

Over the rainbow's rim, 
Musical cherub, soar, singing away ! 

Then, when the gloaming comes. 

Low in the heather blooms 



Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be ! 
Emblem of happiness. 
Blest is thy dwelling-place, — 

Oh to abide in the desert with thee ! 



QUEEN MARY'S RETURN TO SCOT 
LAND. 

After a youth by woes o'ercast. 
After a thousand sorrows past. 
The lovely Maiy once again 
Set foot upon her native plain ; • 
Knelt on the pier with modest grace. 
And turn'd to heaven her beauteous face. 
'Twas then the caps in air were blended, 
A thousand thousand shouts ascended, 
Shiver'd the breeze around the throng, 
Gray barrier cliffs the peals prolong ; 
And every tongue gave thanks to heaven. 
That Mary to their hopes was given. 

Her comely form and graceful mien 

Bespoke the lady and the queen ; 

The woes of one so fair and young 

Moved every heart and every tongue. 

Driven from her home, a helpless child, 

To brave the winds and i)illows wild ; 

An exile bred in realms afar. 

Amid commotions, broils, and war. 

In one short year, her hopes all cross'd — 

A parent, husband, kingdom, lost ! 

And all ere eighteen years had shed 

Their honours o'er her royal head. 

For such a queen, the Stuarts' heir — 

A queen so courteous, young, and fair — 

Who would not every foe defy ? 

Who would not stand — who would not die ] 

Light on her airy steed she sprung, 

Around with golden tassels hung ; 

No chieftain there rode half so free, 

Or half so light and gracefully. 

How sweet to see her ringlets pale 

Wide waving in the southland gale, 

Which through the broom-wood blossoms flew. 

To fan her cheeks of rosy hue ! 

Whene'er it heaved her bosom's screen, 

What beauties in her form were seen ! 

And when her courser's mane it swung, 

A thousand silver bells were rung. 

A sight so fair, on Scottish plain, 

A Scot shall never see again I 

When Mary turn'd her wond'ring eyes 
On rocks that seem'd to prop the skies ; 
On palace, park, and battled pile ; 
On lake, on river, sea, and isle ; 
O'er woods and meadows bathed in dew. 
To distant mountains wild and blue; 
She thought the isle that gave her birth, 
The sweetest, wildest land on earth. 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



Coleridge was perhaps the most wonderful 
genius of the nineteenth century. His mind 
was essentially philosophical, in the highest 
sense of the word. In all his studies, and in 
all his teachings, he fastened upon the leading 
principles involved in his subject, and traced 
them with a logical power and a metaphysical 
skill seldom equalled in any age. Doubtless, 
his most enduring claim to the gratitude and 
recollection of the world grows out of his 
agency in first making the English mind ac- 
quainted with the spiritual philosophy which 
has since his day, and in a great degree through 
his efforts, entirely supplanted the sensuous 
system of Locke and other materialists. But 
it is only v.-ith his life and poetry that we are 
now concerned. 

He was born on the twentieth of October, 
1773, at Ottory St. Mary's, in Devonshire, and 
was the youngest of eleven children. His father 
was a clergyman of sound learning and ability. 
At school, young Coleridge was the wonder 
and delight of all who knew him. Even in 
boyhood he was famous for his wonderful 
acquirements, and still more for those remark- 
able powers of conversation which gained for 
him from his school- fellow, the inimitable 
Charles Lamb, the name of the "inspired 
charity boy." He was from the earliest age 
extremely fond of philosophical and theologi- 
cal discussions ; and he pursued his studies 
with so much ardour that he became by far 
the best scholar in the school. In 1791 he 
was entered at .Tesus College, Cambridge, 
which he left, however, Avithout taking his 
degree. In a thoughtless mood he enlisted in 
the army, and astonished his fellow-soldiers 
by learned and eloquent lectures on Greek 
verse and Greek philosophy; and his careless 
display of his learning led to his discharge 
from the service and his restoration to his 
friends. In 1794 he published a small vo- 
lume of poems, which included also some by 
Wordsworth. In common with many of the 
most gifted and enthusiastic young men of 
the time, he became greatly interested in the 
French revolution, then in progress, and de- 
livered lectures at Bristol on human riyfbts and 



kindred topics involved in the events of the 
time. His views then were extremely radi- 
cal, and were soon after entirely rejected as 
the offspring of heated, unthinking enthusi- 
asm. In 1795 he married, and in 1798 went 
to Germany, where he spent some time in 
making himself familiar with the language 
and philosophical literature of that land of 
scholars. In 1800 he returned to England, 
and became a firm and consistent Christian, 
maintaining the doctrines of the evangelical 
churches, and devoting a great portion of his 
thoughts to the evolution of a system which 
should reconcile Philosophy and Christianity. 
Its great leading principles are scattered 
throughout his works; but he did not live to 
combine them into a regular system, or to set 
them forth as clearly and connectedly as he 
designed to do. For a time, and for lack 
of other employment, he wrote leading arti- 
cles for the "London Morning Post;" and he 
passed the last nineteen years of his life in 
the family of his ardent and devoted friend, 
Dr. GiLMAN, of High gate. He was afflicted 
for a long period with most severe and painful 
illness, which would have crushed the mental 
power of inferior men ; but through it all he 
laboured incessantly, and Vv'ithout "abating 
one jot of heart or hope." He had a large 
circle of friends, among whom were some of 
his most gifted cotemporaries,.who regarded 
him with a reverence seldom accorded to any ■ 
man : and he was in their midst a philosophic 
teacher, expounding the highest Iruths with 
an eloquence and persuasive beauty which 
Plato might have envied. His conversation 
is universally acknowledged to have been of 
the most wonderful character. To a scholar- 
ship surpassing that of nearly all the men of 
his age, he added an attractive manner and a 
musical voice; and those who were in the 
habit of hearing him, have spoken of the na- 
ture and effect of his conversation, in terms 
which seem wild and extravagant, but which 
we have every reason to believe fall short of 
the truth. 

Many critics have spoken of Coleridge 

as havinor promised much and accomplished 

83 



84 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



little. But whether we look at the actual 
number of works he wrote, at the profound 
and weighty character of his productions, or 
at the influence he exerted upon the world, 
he will be found to have done more than any 
of his cotemporaries. His prose writings 
occupy some eight or ten large volumes, and 
contain more thought than twice the number 
of the works of any of his fellows. They 
constitute a perfect treasure of philosophical 
truth ; and we know of no books in the lan- 
guage better adapted to implant the seeds of 
true and noble character in the heart than his. 
His poems are comprised in three volumes, 
and contain some of the most exquisitely 
beautiful productions which an age prolific in 
great poets has produced. They all exhibit 
a wonderfully gorgeous and powerful imagi- 
nation, and a perfect command of language 
and its harmonies. His taste was most ex- 
quisite, and his knowledge of the spiritual, 
in man and in nature, clear and calm. He 



was greatly in the habit of blending philoso- 
phy with poetry, and the tragedy of " Re- 
morse" is a most admirable philosophical 
development of his conception of the nature 
of conscience, as well as a powerful produc- 
tion of the imagination and the poetic faculty. 
The life of Coleridge is uniformly de- 
scribed as having been adorned by the sweet- 
est temper and all the social virtues. The 
late distinguished Washington Allston, who 
was for a considerable period his intimate as- 
sociate, declared his disposition to be angelic. 
He was a close and ardent friend, a profound 
scholar, and in every respect a great and good 
man. " Poetry," he said, " has been to me 
' its own exceeding great reward :' it has 
soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and 
refined my enjoyments; it has endeared soli- 
tude ; and it has given me the habit of wishing 
to discover the good and the beautiful in all 
that meets and surrounds me." He died on 
the twenty-third of July, 1834. 



DEJECTION. 

Well ! — if the bard was weather-wise, who made 
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, 
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence 

Unroused by winds that ])ly a busier trade 

Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes, — 

Or the dull sobbing draft that moans and rakes 
Upon the strings of this Eolian lute, 
Which better far were mute ! 
For lo ! the new moon, winter-bright ! 
And, overspread with iiaantom-light, 
(With swimming phantom-light o'erspread, 
But rimm'd and circled by a silver thread,) 

I see the old moon in her lap — foretelling 
Tiie coming on of rain and squally blast. 

And oh ! that even now the gust were swelling, 
And theslantnight-showerdrivingloudand fasti 

Those sounds — which oft have raised me, whilst 
they awed. 
And sent my soul abroad, — 

Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give, 

Might staitle this dull pain — and make it move 
and live ! 

A grief without a pang — void, dark, and drear — 
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassion'd grief. 
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, 
In word, or sigh, or tear : — 

Oh, lady ! in this wan and heartless mood, — 

To other thoughts by yontlcr throstle woo'd, 
All this long eve, so balmy and serene, — 

Have I been gazing on the western sky, 
And its peculiar tint of yellow-green ; 

And still I gaze — and with how blank an eye ! 

And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, 

That give away their motion to the stars — 



Those stars, that glide behind them or between, 

Now sparkling, now bedimm'd, but always seen — 

Yon crescent moon, as fix'd as if it grew 

In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue- — 

I see them all so excellently fair, 

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are ! 

My genial spirits fail ! 

And what can these avail 
To lift the. smothering weight from off my breast? 

It were a vain endeavour. 

Though I should gaze for ever 
On that green light that lingers in the west : — 
I may not hope from outward forms to win 
The passion and the life, whose fountains are 

within ! 
Oh, lady ! we receive but what we give. 
And in our life alone does nature live : — 
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud ! 
And would we aught behold of higher worth 
Than that inanimate, cold world, allow'd 
To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd, 

Ah ! from the soul itself must issue forth 
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud 

Enveloping the earth — 
And from the soul itself must there be sent 

A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, 
Of all sweet sounds the life and element ! 
Oh, pure of heart ! thou needest not ask of me 
What this strong music in the soul may be : — 
What, and wherein it doth exist. 
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, 
This beautiful and beauty-making power. 

Joy, virtuous lady ! — joy, that ne'er was given 
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, — 
Life, and life's effluence — cloud at once and 
shower, 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



85 



Joy, lady ! is the spirit and the power 

Which wedding nature to us gives in dower, — 

A new earth and new heaven, 
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud — 
Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud — 

We in ourselves rijoice ! 
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, — 

All melodies the echoes of 1hcd voice. 
All colours a suffusion from that light ! 
There was a time when, though my path was rough, 

This joy within me dallied with distress ; 
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff 

Whence fancy made me dreams of happiness. 
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine; 
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seem'd mine. 
But now, afflictions bow me down to earth: 
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth ; 

But oh ! each visitation 
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, — 

My shaping spirit of imagination ! 
For, not to think of what I needs must feel, 

But to be still and patient, all I can, — 
And, haply, by abstruse research to steal 

From my own nature all the natural man, — 

This was my sole resource — my only plan : 

Till that which suits a part infects the whole. 

And now is almost grown the habit of my soul. 

Hence ! viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, — 

Reality's dark dream ! 
I turn from you ; and listen to the wind. 

Which long has raved unnoticed. Vv'^hat a scream 
Of agony, by torture lengthen'd out, [without, — 
That lute sent forth ! Thou wind, that ravest 

Bare crag, or mountain-tarn, or blasted tree. 
Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb. 
Or lonely house long held the witches' home, 
Methinks, were fitter instruments for thee ! 
Mad lutanist ! who, in this month of showers. 
Of dark-brown gardens and of peeping flowers, 
Makest devils' yule, with worse than wintry song, 
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among ! 

Thou actor, perfect in all tragic sounds ! 
Thou mighty poet, e'en to frenzy bold ! 
What tell'st thou now about 1 — 
'T is of the rushing of a host in rout. 
With groans of trampled men, with smarting 
wounds — 
At once they groan with pain and shudder with 

the cold ! 
But hush ! there is a pause of deepest silence ! 

And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd. 
With groans, and tremulous shudderings — all is 
over! 
It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and 
A tale of less affright, [loud ; — 

And temper'd with delight. 
As Otway's self bad framed the tender lay : — 
Tis of a Uttle child, 
Upon a lonesome wild. 
Not far from home — but she had lost her way ; 
And now, moans low, in bitter grief and fear, 
And now, screams loud, and hopes to make her 

mother hear ! 
'T is midnight I — but small thouglitshave I of sleep. 
Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep ! 



Visit her, gentle sleep ! with wings of healing ! 

And may this storm be but a mountain-birth ! 
May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling. 

Silent as though they watch'd the sleeping earth ! 
With light heart may she rise, 
Gay fancy, cheerful eyes, — 

Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice ! 
To her may all things live, from pole to pole, — 
Their life the eddying of her living soul ! 

Oh, simple spirit ! guided from above. — 
Dear lady ! — friend devoutest of my choice, — 
Thus mayst thou ever, evermore rejoice ! 



YOUTH AND AGE. 

Verse, a breeze raid blossoms straying, 

Where hope clung feeding like a bee — 
Both were mine ! Life went a-maying, 

With nature, hope and poesy. 

When I was young I 
When I was young? — Ah, wofu! when! 
Ah, for the change 'twixt now and then ! 
This breathing house not built with hands, — 

This body that docs me grievous wrong, — 
O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands 

How lightly then it flash'd along ! — 
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, 

On winding lakes and rivers wide, 
That ask no aid of sail or oar. 

That fear no spite of wind or tide, — 
Naught cared this body for wind or weather, 
When Youth and I lived in't, together! 
Flowers are lovely — love is flower-like ; 

Friendship is a sheltering tree ; — 
Oh ! the joys that came down, shower-like, 

Of friendship, love and liberty, 
Ere I was old ! 
Ere I was old ? — Ah, woful ere, 

Which tells me. Youth's no longer here ! 
Oh, Youth ! for years so many and sweet, 

'Tis known that thou and I were one, 
I 'II think it but a fond conceit — 

It cannot be — that thou art gone ! 
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toU'd : — 

And thou wert aye a masker bold ! 
What strange disguise hast now put on, 

To make believe that thou art gone 1 
I see these locks in silvery slips. 

This drooping gait, this alter'd size ; — 
But springtide blossoms on thy lips, 

And tears take sunshine from thine eyes! 
Life is but thought : — so think I will 
That Youth and I are housemates still ! 
Dew-drops are the gems of morning, 

But the tears of mournful eve I 
Where no hope is, life's a warning 

That only serves to make us grieve. 
When we are old ! 
That only serves to make us grieve. 
With oft and tedious taking leave, — 
Like some poor, nigh-related guest. 
That may not rudely be dismiss'd, 
Yet hath outstay "d his welcome while. 
And tells the jest — without the smile ! 
n 



86 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 


RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. 

IN SEVEN PARTS 


" And through the drifts the snowy clift 

Did send a dismal sheen : 
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken — 


PAUT I. 


The ice was all between. 


It is an ancient mariner, 


" The ice was here, the ice was there, 


And he stoppeth one of three. 


The ice was all around: 


" By thy long gray beard and glittering eye, 


It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and howl'd, 


Now wherefore stopp'st thou nie ? 


Like noises in a swound ! 


" The bridegroom's doors are open'd wide, 


" At length did cross an Albatross ; 


And I am next of kin ; 


Through the fog it came ; 


The guests are met, the feast is set ; 


As if it had been a Christian soul, 


May'st hear the merry din." 


We hail'd it in God's name. 


He holds him with his skiimy hand : 


'< It ate the food it ne'er had eat. 


" There was a ship," quoth he. 


And round and round it flew. 


" Hold off! unhand me, greybeard loon !" 


The ice did split with a thunder-fit; 


Eftsoons his hand dropt he. 


The helmsman steer'd us through ! 


He holds him with his glittering eye — 


" And a good south wind sprung up behind ; 


The wedding-guest stood still. 


The Albatross did follow. 


And listens like a three year's child: 


And every day, for food or play, 


The mariner hath his will. 


Came to the mariner's hollo ! 


The wedding-guest sat on a stone ; 


" In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 


He cannot chuse but hear ; 


It pcrch'd for vespers nine ; 


And thus spake on that ancient man, 


Whilst all the night, through fog-smoke white. 


The bright-eyed mariner. 


Glimmered the white moonshine." 


" The ship was cheer'd, the harbour clear'd. 


" God save thee, ancient mariner ! 


Merrily did wc drop 


From the fiends that plague thee thus ! — • 


Below the kirk, below the hill, 


Why look'st thou sol" — " With my cross-bow 


Below the light-house top. 


I shot the Albatross !" 


" The sun came up upon the left. 
Out of the sea came he ; 


PART n. 


And he shone bright, and on the riglit 


"The sun now rose upon the right: 


Went down into the sea. 


Out of the sea came he. 


«' Higher and higher every day, 
Till over (he mast at noon" — 


Still hid in mist, and on the left 
Went down into the sea. 


The wedding-guest here beat his breast. 


"And the good south wind still blew behind. 


For he heard the loud bassoon. 


But no sweet bird did follow. 


The bride hath paced into the hall. 
Red as a rose is she ; 


Nor any day for footl or play 
Came to the mariner's hoilo ! 


Nodding their heads before her goes 


" And I had done an hellish thing. 


The merry minstrelsy. 


And it would work 'cm woe : 


I 

The wedding-guest he beat his breast, 

Yet he cannot chuse but hear; 
And thus spake on that ancient man. 

The bright-eyed mariner. 


For all averr'd I had kill'd the bird 
That made the breeze to blow. 

Ah, wretch ! said they, the bird to slay. 
That made the breeze to blow ! 


« And now the storm-blast came, and he 

Was tyrannous and strong : 
He struck with his o'ertakiiig winds. 

And chased us south along. 


" Nor dim nor red, like God's own head. 

The glorious sun uprist: 
They all averr'd I had kill'd the bird 

That brought the fog and mist. 
'T was right, said they, such birds to slay. 


" With sloping masts and dipping prow, 
As who pursued with yell and blow 
Still treads the shadow of his foe, 
f And forward bends his head. 

The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the blast. 
And southward aye we fled. 


That bring the fog and mist. 

"The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew. 

The furrow stream'd olT free : 
We were the first that ever burst 

Into that silent sea. 


" And now there came both mist and snow. 


"Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down. 


And it grew wonderous cold : 


'T was sad as sad could be ; 


And ice, mast-high, came floating by. 


And we did speak only to break 


As green as emerald. 


The silence of the sea ! 

-il 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 87 


" All in a hot and copper sky, 


" See ! see ! (I cried) she tacks no more ! 


The bloody sun, at noon, 


Hither to work us weal ; 


Right up above the mast did stand, 


Without a breeze, without a tide, 


No bigger than the moon. 


She stcddics with upright keel ! 


"Day after day, day after day, 


" The western wave was all a flame, 


We stuck, nor breath nor motion, 


The day was well nigh done I 


As idle as a painted ship 


Almost upon the western wave 


Upon a painted ocean. 


Rested the broad bright sun ; 


" Water, water, every where. 


When that strange shape drove suddenly 
Betwixt us and the sun. 


And all the boards did shrink ; 




Water, water, every where, 


"And straight the sun was fleck'd with bars, 


Nor any drop to drink. 


(Heaven's mother send us grace !) 


" The very deep did rot : Christ ! 


As if through a dungeon grate he peer'd, 
With broad and burning face. 


That ever this should be ! 




Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 


"Alas ! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) 


Upon the slimy sea. 


How fasts she nears and nears ! 




Are those her sails that glance in the sun. 


" About, about, in reel and rout 


Like restless gossameres 1 


The death-fires danced at night; 


The water, like a witch's oils, 


" Are those her ribs through which the sun 


Burnt green, and blue, and white. 


Did peer, as through a grate ] 




And is that woman all her crew 1 


"And some in dreams assured were 


Is that a Death] and are there twol 


1 Of the spirit that plagued us so : 


Is Death that woman's mate 1 


Nine fathom deep he had follow'd us 




From the land of mist and snow. 


" Her lips were red, her looks were free. 




Her locks were yellow as gold : 
Her skin was as white as leprosy, 
The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she. 


" And every tongue, through utter drought, 


Was wither'd at the root ; 


We could not speak, no more than if 


Who thicks man's blood with cold. 


We had been choak'd with soot. 






"The naked hulk alongside came. 


" Ah ! well-a-day ! what evil looks 


And the twain were casting dice ; 


Had I from old and young ! 


' The game is done ! I've won, I've won !' 


Listead of the cross, the Albatross 
About my neck was hung." 


Quoth she, and whistles thrice. 




" A gust of wind sterte up behind 


PART III. 


And whistled through his bones ; 




Through the holes of his eyes and the hole of 
his mouth, 
Half-whistles and half-groans. 


"Thf.ue pass'd a weary time. Each throat 
Was parch'd, and glazed each eye. 


A weiry time ! a weary time ! 




How glazed each weary eye ! 


" The sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out : 


When, looking westward, I beheld 


At one stride comes the dark ; 


A something in the sky. 


With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea. 


" At first it seem'd a little speck. 


Off shot the spectre-bark. 


And then it seem'd a mist : 


"We Usten'd and look'd sideways up ! 


It moved and moved, and took at last 


Fear at my heart, as at a cup, 


A certain shape, I wist. 


My life-blood seem'd to sip ! 


" A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist ! 
And still it near'd and ncar'd : 


The stars were dim, and thick the night, 


The steersman's face by his lamp gleam'd white ; 


And as if it dodged a water-sprite. 


From the sails the dews did drip — 


It plunged and tack'd and veer'd. 


Till clombe above the eastern bar 


The horned moon, with one bright star 


" With throat unslack'd, with black lips baked. 


Within the nether tip. 


We could not laugh nor wail ; 




Through utter drought all dumb we stood! 


" One after one, by the star-dogg'd raoon. 


I bit my arm, I suck'd the blood. 


Too quick for groan or sigh ; 


And cried, A sail ! a sail ! 


Each turn'd his face with a ghastly pang, 




And cursed me with his eye. ' 


" With throat unslack'd, with black lips baked. 




Agape they heard me call : 


" Four times fifty living men. 


Gramercy ! they for joy did grin, 


(And I heard nor sigh nor groan,) 


And all at once fhcir breath drew in. 


With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, 


As they were druiking all. 


They dropp'd down one by one. 


L 





88 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 


" The souls did from their bodies fly, — 


" Within the shadow of the ship 


They fled to bliss or woe ! 


I watch'd tlieir rich attire ; 


And every soul, it pass'd me by, 


Blue, glossy green, and velvet black. 


Like the whiz of my cross-bow !" 


They coil'd and swam; and every track 




Was a flash of golden fire. 


PART IV. 


" happy living things ! no tongue 


" I FEAR thee, ancient mariner ! 


Their beauty might declare ; 


I fear thy skinny hand ! 


A spring of love gusht from my heart, 


And thou art long, and lank, and brown, 


And I bless'd them unaware! 


As is the ribb'd sea-sand. 


Sure my kind saint took pity on me, 


" I fear thee and thy glittering eye, 


And I bless'd them unaware. 


And thy skinny hand, so brown." — 


" The self-same moment I could pray ; 
And from my neck so free 


" Fear not, fear not, thou wedding guest ! 


This body dropt not down. 


The Albatross fell off", and sank 


" Alone, alone, all, all alone. 


Like lead into the sea." 


Alone on a wide, wide sea ! 


PART V. 


And never a saint took pity on 




My soul in agony. 


"0 SLEEP ! it is a gentle thing, 




Beloved from pole to pole ! 


" The many men, so beautiful ! 


To Mary Queen the praise be given ! 


And they all dead did lie : 


She sent the gentle sleep from heaven, 


And a thousand thousand slimy things 


That slid into my soul. 


Lived on ; and so did L 






" The silly buckets on the deck, 


" I look'd upon the rotting sea. 


That had so long remain'd. 


And drew my eyes away ; 


I dreamt that they were fill'd with dews ; 


I look'd upon the rotting deck, 


And when I awoke, it rain'd. 


And there the dead men lay. 


<' My lips were wet, my throat was cold, 


" I look'd to heaven, and tried to pray ; 


My garments all were dank ; 


But or ever a prayer had gusht. 


Sure I had drunken in my dreams, 


A wicked whisper came, and made 


And still my body drank. 


My heart as dry as dust. 


" I moved, and could not feel my limbs : 


" I closed my lids, and kept them close, 


I was so light — almost 


And the balls like pulses beat; [sky 


I thought that I had died in sleep. 


For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the 


And was a blessed ghost. 


Lay, like a cloud, on my weary eye, 


" And soon I heard a roaring wind : 


And the dead were at my feet. 


It did not come anear ; 


" The cold sweat melted from their limbs, 


But with its sound it shook the sails, 


Nor rot nor reek did they : 


That were so thin and sere. 


The look with which they look'd on me 


" The upper air hurst into life ! 


Had never pass'd away. 


And a hundred tire-flags sheen. 


"An orphan's curse would drag to hell 


To and fro they were hurried about ; 
And to and fro, and in and out. 


A spirit from on high : 


The wan stars danced between. 


But oh ! more horrible than that 




Is the curse in a dead man's eye ! 


"And the coming wind did roar more loud. 


Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, 


And the sails did sigh like sedge ; 


And yet I could not die. 


And the rain pour'd down from one black cloud ; 




The moon was at its edge. 


" The moving moon went up the sky, 




And nowhere did abide ; 


" The thick black cloud was cleft, and still 


Softly she was going up. 


The moon was at its side ; 


And a star or two beside — 


Like waters shot from some high crag, 


« Her beams bemock'd the sultry main, 
Like April hoar-frost spread ; 


The lightning fell with never a jag. 


A river steep and wide. 


But where the ship's huge shadow lay, 


" The loud wind never reach'd the ship 


The charmed water burnt alway 


Yet now the ship moved on ! 


A still and awful red. 


Beneath the lightning and the moon 


" Beyond the shadow of the ship. 


The dead men gave a groan. 


I watch'd the water snakes : 


" They groan'd, they stirr'd, they all uprose, 


They moved in tracks of shining white, 


Nor spake, nor moved their eyes ; 


And when they rear'd, the elfish light 


It had been strange, even in a dream. 


Fell off in hoary flakes. 


To have seen those dead men rise. 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



89 



« The helmsman steer'd, the ship moved on : 

Yet never a breeze up blew ; 
The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, 

Where they were wont to do : 
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools — 

We were a ghastly crew. 

" The body of my brother's son 

Stood by me, knee to knee: 
The body and I pull'd at one rope, 

But he said nought to me." 

" I fear thee, ancient mariner !" 

" Be calm thou, wedding-guest ! 
'Twas not those souls that fled in pain. 
Which to their corses came again, 

But a troop of spirits blest: 

"For when it dawn'd — they dropp'd their arms. 

And cluster'd round the mast; 
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, 

And from their bodies pass'd. 

" Around, around, flew each sweet sound, 

Tlien darted to the sun ; 
Slpwly the sounds came back again, 

Now mix'd, now one by one. 

" Sometimes a-dropping from the sky 

I heard the sky-lark sing ; 
Sometimes all little birds that are, 
How they seem'd to fill the sea and air 

With their sweet jargoning ! 

"And now 'twas like all instruments. 

Now like a lonely flute ; 
And now it is an angel's song, 

That makes the heavens be mute. 

" It ceased ; yet still the sails made on 

A pleasant noise till noon, 
A noise like of a hidden brook 

In the leafy month of June, 
That to the sleeping woods all night 

Singcth a quiet tune. 

" Till noon we quietly sail'd on. 

Yet never a breeze did breathe : 
Slowly and smoothly went the ship, 

Moved onward from beneath. 

" Under the keel nine fathom deep. 

From the land of mist and snow, 
The spirit slid : and it was he 

That made the ship to go. 
The sails at noon left off their tune, 

And the ship stood still also. 

" The sun, right up above the mast. 

Had fixt her to the ocean ; 
But in a minute she 'gan stir, 

With a short uneasy motion — 
Backwards and forwards half her length, 

With a short uneasy motion. 

"Then like a pawing horse let go. 

She made a sudden bound : 
It flung the blood into my head. 

And I fell down in a svvound. 
12 



" How long in that same fit I lay, 

I have not to declare ; 
But ere my living life return'd, 
I heard and in my soul disccrn'd 

Two voices in the air. 

" « Is it he ]' quoth one, ' Is this the man ? 

By him who died on cross. 
With his cruel bow he laid lull low 

The harmless Albatross. 

" 'The spirit who bideth by himself 
In the land of mist and snow. 

He loved the bird that loved the man 
Who shot him with his bow.' 

" The other was a softer voice, 

As soft as honey dew : 
Quoth he, ' The man hath penance done, 

And penance more will do.' 



riRST VOICE. 

" 'But tell mc, tell me ! speak again. 

Thy soft response renewing — 
What makes that ship drive on so fasti 

What is the ocean doing ]' 

SECOND VOICE. 

" ' Still as a slave before his lord. 

The ocean hath no blast; 
His great bright eye most silently 

Up to the moon is cast — 

" ' If he may know which way to go ; 

For she guides him smooth or grim, 
See, brother, see ! how graciously 

She looketh down on him.' 

FIRST VOICE. 

" ' But wh}"^ drives on that ship so fast. 
Without or wave or wind '!' 

SECOND VOICE. 

" ' The air is cut away before, 
And closes from behind. 

" ' Fly, brother, fly ! more high, more high ! 

Or we shall be belated : 
For slow and slow that ship will go, 

When the mariner's trance is abated.' 

"I woke, and we were sailing on 

As in a gentle weather : 
'Twas night, calm night, the moon was high; 

The dead men stood together. 

"All stood together on the deck, 

For a charnel-dungeon fitter: 
All fix'd on me their stony eyes, 

That in the moon did glitter. 

"The pang, the curse, with which they died, 

Had never pass'd away : 
I could not draw my eyes from theirs, 

Nor turn them up to pray. 

" And now this spell was snapt : once more 
I view'd the ocean green, 
h3 



90 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



And look'd far forth, yet little saw 
Of what had else been seen — 

" Like one, that on a lonesome road 

Doth walk in fear and dread, 
And having once turn'd round, walks on, 

And turns no more his head ; 
Because he knows a frightful fiend 

Doth close behind hiui tread. 

"But soon there breathed a wind on me, 
Nor soui.d nor motion made : 

Its path was not upon the sea, 
In ripple or in shade. 

"It raised my hair, it fann'd my cheek, 
Like a meadow-gale of spring — 

It mingled strangely with my fears. 
Yet it felt like a welcoming. 

"Swiftly, swiftly, flew the ship, 

Yet she sail'd softly too : 
Sweetly, sweetly, blew the breeze — 

On me alone it blew. 

" Oh ! dream of joy ! is this indeed 

The light-house top I see? 
Is this the hill 1 is this the kirk 1 

Is this mine own countree ? 

" We drifted o'er the harbour bar, 
And I with sobs did pray — 

let me be awake, my God ! 
Or let me sleep alway. 

" The harbour bay was clear as glass. 

So smoothly it was strewn ! 
And on the bay the moonlight lay. 

And the shadow of the moon. 

" The rock shone bright, the kirk no less. 

That stands above the rock : 
The moonlight steep'd in silentness 

The steady weathercock. 

" And the bay was white with silent hght. 

Till, rising from the same. 
Full many shapes, that shadows were. 

In crimson colours came. 

" A little distance from the prow 
Those crimson shadows were; 

1 turn'd my eyes upon the^leck — 

Oh, Christ ! what saw I there ! 

<'Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat. 

And, by the holy rood ! 
A man all light, a seraph-man. 

On every corse there stood. 

" This seraph-band, each waved his hand : 

It was a heavenly sight ! 
They stood as signals to the land. 

Each one a lovely light : 

" This seraph-band, each waved his hand. 

No voice did they impart — 
No voice; but oh ! the silence sank 

Like music on my heart. 



" But soon I heard the dash of oars, 

I heard the pilot's cheer ; 
My head was turn'd perforce away, 

And I saw a boat appear. 

" The pilot, and the pilot's boy, 

I heard them coming fast: 
Dear Lord in heaven ! it was a joy 

The dead men could not blast. 

" I saw a third — I heard his voice : 

It is the hermit good ! 
He singeth loud his godly hymns 

That he makes in the wood. 
He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away 

The Albatross's blood." 

PART VII. 

"This hermit good lives in that wood 

Which slopes down to the sea. 
How loudly his sweet voice he rears ! 
He loves to talk with marineres 

That come from a far countree. 

" He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve — 

He hath a cushion plump : 
It is the moss that wholly hides 

The rotted old oak stump. 

" The skiflT-boat near'd : I heard them talk, 

' Why this is strange, I trow ! 
Where are those lights so many and fair, 

That signal made but now V 

" ' Strange, by my faith !' the hermit said — 
' And they answer'd not our cheer ! 

The planks look warp'd I and see those sails, 
How thin they are and sere ! 

I never saw ought like to them, 
Unless perchance it were 

« ' The skeletons of leaves that lag 

My forest brook along : 
When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow. 
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below. 

That eats the she-wolf's young.' 

" ' Dear Lord ! it hath a fiendish look' — 

(The pilot made reply) — 
' I am afcared' — ' Push on, push on !' 

Said the hermit cheerily. 

" The boat came closer to the ship, 

But I nor spake nor stirr'd ; 
The boat came close beneath the ship, 

And straight a sound was heard. 

" Under the water it rumbled on, 

Still louder and more dread : 
It reach'd the ship, it split the bay ; 

The ship went down like lead. 

" Stunn'd by that loud and dreadful sound. 

Which sky and ocean smote, 
Like one that hath been seven days drown'd. 

My body lay afloat ; 
But swift as dreams, myself I found 

Within the pilot's boat. 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 


91 


" Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, 


" He prayeth best, who loveth best 




The boat spun round and round ; 


All things both great and small ; 




And all was still, save that the hill 


For the dear God who loveth us. 




Was telhng of the sound. 


He made and loveth all." 




« I moved my lips — the pilot shriek'd 


The mariner, whose eye is bright. 




And fell down in a fit ; 


Whose beard with age is hoar, . 




The holy hermit raised his eyes, 


Is gone ; and now the wedding-guest 




And pray'd where he did sit. 


Turn'd from the bridegroom's door. 




" I took the oars : the pilot's boy, 


He went like one that hath been stunn'd. 




Who now doth crazy go. 


And is of sense forlorn : 




Laugh'd loud and long, and all the while 


A sadder and a wiser man. 




His eyes went to and fro. 


He rose the morrow morn. 




' Ha ! ha !' quoth he, ' full plain I see, 






The devil knows how to row.' 
" And now, all in my own countree, 








I stood on the firm land ! 


LOVE. 




The hermit stepp'd forth from the boat. 




And scarcely he could stand. 


All thoughts, all passions, all delights, 




' ' shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man !' 


Whatever stirs this mortal frame. 




The hermit cross'd his brow. 


Are all but ministers of love. 




< Say quick,' quoth he, ' I bid thee say — 


And feed his sacred flame. 




What manner of man art thou V 


Oft in my waking dreams do I 




« Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench'd 


Live o'er again that happy hour. 




With a woeful agony. 


When midway on the mount I lay. 




Which forced me to begin my tale ; 


Beside the ruin'd tower. 




And then it left me free. 


The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene. 




" Since then, at an uncertain hour, 


Had blended with the lights of eve ; 




That agony returns ; 


And she was there, my hope, my joy, 




And till my ghastly tale is told, 


My own dear Genevieve ! 




This heart within me burns. 


She leant against the armed man. 




" I pass, like night, from land to land ; 


The statue of the armed knight; 




I have strange power of speech ; 


She stood and listen'd to my lay. 




That moment that his face I see, 


Amid the lingering light. 




I know the man that must hear me : 






To him my tale I teach. 


Few sorrows hath she of her own 
My hope ! my joy ! my Genevieve ! 




« What loud uproar bursts from that door ! 


She loves me best, whene'er I sing 




The wedding-guests are there ; 


The songs that make her grieve. 




But in the garden bower the bride 






And bridemaids singing are ; 


I play'd a soft and doleful air. 




And hark the little vesper bell. 


I sang an old and moving story — 




Which biddeth me to prayer ! 


An old rude song, that suited well 
That ruin wild and hoary. 




« wedding-guest ! this soul hath been 






Alone on a wide, wide sea : 


She listen'd with a flitting blush, 




So lonely 'twas, that God himself 


With downcast eyes and modest grace. 




Scarce seemed there to be. 


For well she knew, I could not choose 




« sweeter than the marriage feast, 


But gaze upon her face. 




'T is sweeter far to me, 


I told her of the knight that wore 




To walk together to the kirk 


Upon his shield a burning brand ; 




With a goodly company ! — 


And that for ten long years he woo'd 
The lady of the land. 




« To walk together to the kirk, 




And all together pray. 


I told her how he pined ; and ah ! 




While each to his great Father bends. 


The deep, the low, the pleading tone 




Old men, and babes, and loving friends, 


With which I sang another's love. 




And youths and maidens gay ! 


Interpreted my own. 




« Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell 


She listen'd with a flitting blush. 




To thee, thou wedding-guest ! 


With downcast eyes and modest grace ; 




He prayeth well, who loveth well 


And she forgave me, that I gazed 




Both man, and bird, and beast. 

t- . 


Too fondly on her face ! 





92 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



But when I told the cruel scorn 

That crazed that bold and lovely knight, 
And that he cross'd the mountain woods, 
JN or rested day nor night ; 

That sometimes from the savage den, 

And sometimes from the darksome shade, 
And sometimes starting up at once 
In green and sunny glade. 

There came and look'd him in the face 

An angel beautiful and bright ; 
And that he knew it was a fiend, 
This miserable knight ! 

And that, unknowing what he did. 

He leap'd amid a murderous band, 
And saved from outrage worse than death 
The lady of the land ! 

And how she wept, and clasp'd his knees ; 

And how she tended him in vain — 
And ever strove to expiate 

The scorn that crazed his brain ; 

And that she nursed him in a cave ; 
And how his madness went away. 
When on the yellow forest leaves 
A dying man he lay ; 

His dying words — but when I reach'd 

That tenderest strain of all the ditty, 
My faltering voice and pausing harp 
Disturb'd her soul with pity ! 

All impulses of soul and sense 

Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve; 
The music, and the doleful tale. 
The rich and balmy eve ; 

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, 

An undistinguishable throng. 
And gentle wishes long subdued, 
Subdued and cherish'd long ! 

She wept with pity and delight, 

She blush'd with love, and virgin shame ; 
And, like the murmur of a dream, 
I heard her breathe my name. 

Her bosom heaved — she stept aside, 

As conscious of my look she stept — 
Then suddenly, with timorous eye, 
She fled to me and wept. 

She half-enclosed me with her arms. 

She press'd me with a meek embrace ; 
And bending back her head, look'd up, 
And gazed upon my face. 

'Twas partly love, and partly fear, 

And partly 't was a bashful art. 
That I might rather feel, than see, 
The sweUing of her heart. 

I calm'd her fears, and she was calm. 

And told her love with virgin pride ; 
And so I won my Genevieve, 

My bright and beauteous bride. 



THE PAINS OF SLEEP. 

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay, 
It hath not been my use to pray 
With moving lips or bended knees: 
But silently, by slow degrees, 
My spirit I to love compose. 
In humble trust mine eyelids close, 

With reverential resignation. 
No wish conceived, no thought express'd, 

Only a sense of supplication; 
A sense o'er all my soul impress'd 
That I am weak, yet not unblest. 
Since in me, round me, everywhere 
Eternal strength and wisdom are. 
But yesternight I prayed aloud 

In anguish and in agony. 
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd 

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me : 
A lurid light, a trampling throng, 
Sense of intolerable wrong. 
And whom I scorn'd, those only strong ! 
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will 
Still baffled, and yet burning still ! 
Desire with loathing strangely mix'd, 
On wild or hateful objects fix'd. 
Fantastic passions : maddening brawl ! 
And shame and terror over all ! 
Deed to be hid which were not hid, 

Which all confused I could not know, 
Whether I suffcr'd, or I did : 

For all seem'd guilt, remorse, or wo, 
My own or others', still the same 
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame. 
So two nights pass'd : the night's dismay 
Sadden'd and stunn'd the coming day. 
Sleep, the wide blessing, seem'd to me 
Distemper's worst calamity. 
The third night, when my own loud scream 
Had waked me from the fiendish dream, 
O'ercome with sutTerings strange and wild, 
I wept as I had been a child ; 
And having thus by tears subdued 
My anguish to a milder mood, 
Such punishments, I said, were due 

To natures deepliest stain'd with sin, — 
For aye entempesting anew 

The unfathomable hell within. 
The horror of their deeds to view. 
To know and loathe, yet wish and do ! 
Such griefs with such men well agree. 
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me ? 
To be beloved is all I need. 
And whom I love, I love indeed. 



CONCEALMENT. 

Time, as he courses onward, still unrolls 
The volume of Concealment. In the future, 
As in the optician's glassy cylinder. 
The indistinguishable blots and colours 
Of the dim past collect and shape themselves, 
Upstarting in their own completed image 
To scare or to reward. 



ROBERT SOUTIIEY. 



Dr. Southey was the son of a linen draper 
in Bristol, where he was born on the twelfth 
of August, 1774. In his sixteenth year he 
was placed at the Westminster School, and in 
1792 at Baliol College, with the design of 
his entering the church. His career at Ox- 
ford was a brief one; his tendency toward 
Socinianism made the plan marked out for 
him disagreeable; and he returned to Bristol, 
where in 1794 he published, in conjunction 
with Robert Lovell, his first collection of 
poems. In the autumn of the following year 
he was married to a sister of the wife of his 
friend Coleridge, and soon after, while he 
was on his way to Lisbon, appeared his Joan 
of Arc. It was about this time that he wrote, 
in three days, his notable drama of Wat 
Tyler, which was surreptitiously printed 
some twenty-three years afterward. In the 
summer of 1796 he returned to England, re- 
moved to London, and entered Gray's Inn. 
A portion of the years 1800 and 1801 were 
passed in the Peninsula, whence he sent 
home his romance of Thalaba the Destroyer, 
which permanently established his reputation 
as a poet. At the end of a short residence in 
Dublin, as secretary to the Irish Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, he went to Keswick, where 
he lived the rest of his life. In 1805 he pub- 
lished Madoc, which had been brought to a 
close in 1799; in 1810 the Curse of Kehama, 
in 1814 Roderick the last of the Goths, in 
1821 The Vision of Judgment, and in 1825 
The Tale of Paraguay, the latest of his 
longer poems. Beside these he wrote nu- 
merous briefer pieces, all of which are in- 
cluded in the ten volume edition of his poeti- 
cal works which appeared in London under 
his own supervision in 1837, and was re- 
printed by Appleton and Company, in New 
York, in 1839. 

In addition to his poems, Mr. Soutiiey 
produced num.erous prose works, of which the 
principal are Amadis de Gaul, from the Spa- 
nish ; I'almerin of England, from the Portu- 
guese ; Letters from England, written under 
the fictitious name of Espriella; the Chroni- 
cle of the (.'id, from the Spanish; Omniana, 



The History of Brazil, The History of the 
Peninsular War, The Book of the Church, 
Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae, Colloquies on 
the Progress and Prospects of Society, The 
Life of Nelson, The Life of Wesley, The Life 
of Cowper, editions, with memoirs of the au- 
thors, of The Pilgrim's Progress, The Works 
of Chatterton, and The Works of Henry Kirke 
White, numerous contributions to the Quar- 
terly Review, and that remarkable book, The 
Doctor. 

On the death of Mr. Pye, in 1813, Southey 
was appointed poet laureate; and in 1821 he 
received the degree of Doctor of Laws from 
the University of Oxford. In the spring of 
1839 he contracted a second marriage with 
Caroline Anne, daughter of Mr. Charles 
Bowles, and one of the most pathetic and 
natural of the living writers of her sex. 

Intense labour in every department of lite- 
rature — in poetry, philosophy, history, bio- 
graphy and criticism — continued for so many 
years,at length obscured SouTHEY'sgen!us,and 
reduced him to a state of mental darkness. 
For three years before his death his intellect 
was nearly gone, and in the last year of his 
life he could not recognise the dearest mem- 
bers of his family. He died at Keswick on 
the twenty -first of March, 1843, in the sixty- 
eighth year of his age. 

Southey's prose is hardly exceeded in the 
English language. It is clear, vigorous, 
manly, and graceful, worthy of the elder and 
greatest writers. In his poems, especially 
his longer ones, we rather admire the author 
than the works ; his energy seems rather force 
of character than of mind, and we are more 
struck by the resistless daring of his temper 
than the boldness of his faculties. His effu- 
sions are not instinctive or spontaneous; he does 
not seem to have "fed on thoughts that volun- 
tary move harmonious numbers:" he urges his 
genius rather than is mastered by it. The 
goal perhaps is reached in good time, but it 
is by application of the spur. His poems un- 
questionably have ihtit /niJc/iri/ut/c which bars 
dispraise; the r/ji/f.'w sm;?/w which should kin- 
dle enthusiasm is lacking. Yet, after every 

93 



94 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



abatement, his name will remain one of the 
greatest in modern poetry. 

To master and wield the colossal forms of 
oriental superstition, to animate them with 
human and familiar interests, to render them 
ductile to all the demands of art, was a task 
which only the extravagance of youth would 
have undertaken, and only the rarest and most 
remarkable genius could accomplish. This 
SouTHEY did, and with entire success. With 
the exception of Beckford, he was the first 
to invade the gorgeous East : and no man 
has followed him in any new attempt to con- 
struct epics from materials derived only from 
dictionaries and hihliotheqnes, and to inspire 
modern poetry with the faith, the fears and 
passions of a people extinct for thousands of 
years. 

The influence of these extraordinary works 
upon the literature and taste of England has 
been much greater than is generally acknow- 
ledged. They shittered the sceptre of that 
bastard empire of decency and imbecility 
which Pope's successors had set up. If 
Wordsworth has been called the poet of 
poets in respect to feeling, Southey may 
more truly be termed the study of artists in 
respect to imagination. It was a spark from 
Southey's ardour which kindled in Scott the 
ambition to reconstruct the crumbled temple 
of Scottish chivalry; and he led Byron and 
MooRE to the orient. While the languid tints 
of Hayley and Darwin and Beattie were 
gathering in the evening of its glory over the 
once splendid sky of British literature, his 
spirit suddenly arose above the horizon, and 
streamed over the scene like "a thunder- 
storm against the wind." From that time the 
aspect and the elements of English poetry 
were changed. We should feel that a man 
wanted something to a complete insight into 
the character of modern art who had not read 
Thalaba and Kehama. 

When we look at the great poets who com- 
monly appear about the time that a nation is 
passing from the dominion of sense to that 
of reason, — to Homer, Dante, Spenser, — we 
find them in possession of all the faculties 
of art, — invention, construction, decoration, 
passion, sentimen*. moral sense. Their suc- 
cessors, severally, have some one or two of 



these, in exclusion of the rest; and the popu- 
larity of any poet will depend upon which 
quality he possesses. But it by no means 
follows that this popularity will be a test 
of the value and dignity of the order of the 
gift which tlie poet has ; for some of the 
rarest and highest capacities of the artist are 
those which are not the most highly appre- 
ciated by the multitude. Southey had, in an 
eminent degree, a power which, with the ex- 
ception of Scott, almost all his contempora- 
ries wanted, construction, — the power of giv- 
ing/wm to a work, — the architectural faculty 
of the mind. This is the most uncommon of 
the poet's powers, and is in itself a great 
merit, without which there is no art. It is 
almost the only faculty which Jonson had ; 
and while the lower benches of critics have 
held Jonson cheap, those in the highest seats 
have always deemed that his title to a place 
among the great authors of his country was 
unquestionable. 

Southey's smaller poems, written gene- 
rally at a later period of life, are very different 
from the longer ones ; and the difference is cha- 
racteristic of the great and singular change 
which took place in him in his progress from 
youth to age. In them he delights chiefly to 
illustrate and beautify the donaestic affections. 
The spirit that once soared almost beyond 
following, here loves to nestle in the very 
bosom of social feeling. Humanity in its 
genuine sympathies, in its truest and most 
native interests, in its most sincere and deep- 
born sentiments, is the sphere around which 
his fancy makes its willing yet controlled and 
gentle circuit. Those subjects which most 
other writers have felt as a dead weight upon 
their powers, as duty, piety, temperance, and 
fidelity, seemed to inspire him. To the last 
his genius always warmed into the beauty of 
its youthful ardour whenever a good affection 
was to be expressed, a friend to be commemo- 
rated, or a virtue to be praised. 

These poems, indeed, possess a charm be- 
yond the scope of criticism. They belong to 
the nowjustifiedexcellence of one of the love- 
liest characters of which literary history bears 
record. They show us the heart of one of 
the best men that modern England has con- 
tained. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



95 



ODE, 

WRITTEN DURING THE NEGOTIATIONS WITH BONA- 
PARTE, IN JANUARY, 1814. 

Who counsels peace at this momentous hourj 
When God hath given deliverance to the oppress'd, 

And to the injured power ] 

Who counsels peace, when vengeance, like a flood, 

Rolls on, no longer now to be repress'd ; 

When innocent blood 

From the four corners of the world cries out 

For justice upon one accursed head; 

When freedom hath her holy banners spread 

Over all nations, now in one just cause 

United; when, with one sublime accord, 

Europe throws off the yoke abhorr'd. 

And loyalty, and faith, and ancient laws 

Follow tiie avenging sword ! 

Wo, wo to England ! wo and endless shame, 

If this heroic land. 

False to her feelings and unspotted fame. 

Hold out the olive to the tyrant's hand ! 

Wo to the world, if Bonaparte's throne 

Be suffer'd still to stand ! 

For by what name shall right and wrong be 

known, — 

What new and courtly phrases must we feign 

For falsehood, murder, and all monstrous crimes. 

If that perfidious Corsican maintain 

Still his detested reign. 

And France, who yearns even now to break her 

chain, 

Beneath his iron rule be left to groan 1 

No ! by the innumerable dead. 

Whose blood hath for his lust of power been shed. 

Death only can for his foul deeds atone ; 

That peace which death and judgment can bestow, 

That peace be Bonaparte's, — that alone ! 

For sooner shall the Ethiop change his skin. 

Or from the leopard shall her spots depart, 

Than this man change his old, flagitious heart. 

Have ye not seen him in the balance weigh'd. 

And there found wanting 1 On the stage of blood 

Foremost the resolute adventurer stood ; 

And when, by many a battle won. 

He placed upon his brow the crown. 

Curbing delirious France beneath his sway, 

Then, like Octavius in old time. 

Fair name might he have handed down, 

Effacing many a stain of former crime. 

Fool I should he cast away that bright renown ! 

Fool ! the redemption proffer'd should he lose ! 

When Heaven such grace vouchsafed him that the 

way 

To good and evil lay 

Before him, which to choose. 

But evil was his good. 

For all too long in blood had he been nursed. 

And ne'er was earth with verier tyrant cursed. 

Bold man and bad. 

Remorseless, godless, full of fraud and lies, 

And black with murders and with perjuries. 

Himself in hell's whole panoply he clad ; 



]Vo law but his own headstrong will he knew, 
No counsellor but his own wicked heart. 

From evil thus j)orten;ous strength he drew, 

And trampled under foot all human ties, 

All holy laws, all natural charities. 

O France ! beneath this fierce barbarian's sway 

Disgraced thou art to all succeeding times ; 

Rapine, and blood, and fire have mark'd thy way, 

All loathsome, all unutterable crimes. 

A curse is on thee, France ! from far and wide 

It hath gone up to heaven. All lands have cried 

For vengeance upon thy detested head ! 

All nations curse thee, F' ranee ! for wheresoe'er, 

In peace or war, thy banner hath been spread, 

All forms of human woe have follow'd there. 

The living and the dead 

Cry out alike against thee ! They who bear, 

Crouching beneath its weight, thine iron yoke, 

Join in the bitterness of secret prayer 

The voice of that innumerable throng. 

Whose slaughter'd spirits day and night invoke 

The everlasting Judge of right and wrong. 
How long, Lord ! Holy and Just, how long ! 

A merciless oppressor hast thou been, 

Thyself remorselessly oppress'd meantime ; 

Greedy of war, when all that thou couldst gain 

Was but to dye thy soul with deeper crime, 

And rivet faster round thyself the chain. 
Oh! blind to honour, and to interest blind. 

When thus in abject servitude resign'd 

To this barbarian upstart, thou couldst brave 

God's justice, and the heart of human-kind ! 

Madly thou thoughtest to enslave the world, 

Thyself the while a miserable slave. 

Behold, the flag of vengeance is unfurl'd! 

The dreadful armies of the North advance ; 

While England, Portugal, and Spain combined. 

Give their triumphant banners to the wind, 

And stand victorious in the fields of France. 

One man hath been for ten long, wretched years 
The cause of all this V)lood and all these tears ; 

One man in this most awful point of time 

Draws on thy danger, as he caused thy crime. 

Wait not too long the event, 

For now whole Europe comes against thee bent ; 

His wiles and their own strength the nations know : 

Wise from past wrongs, on future peace intent, 

The people and the princes, with one mind, 

From all parts move against the general foe ; 

One act of justice, one atoning blow. 

One execrable head laid low, 

Even yet, O France ! averts thy punishment. 

Open thine eyes ! — too long hast thou been blind ; 

Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind ! 

France ! if thou lovest thine ancient fame. 

Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame ! 

By the bones which bleach on Jaffa's beach ; 

By the blood which on Domingo's shore 

Hath clogg'd the carrion-birds with gore ; 

By the flesh which gorged the wolves of Spain, 

Or stiflen'd on the snowy plain 

Of frozen Moscovy ; 



96 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



By the bodies, which He all open to the sky, 

Tracking from Elbe to Rhine the tyrant's flight ; 

By the widow's and the orphan's cry; 

By the childless parent's misery ; 

By the lives which he hath shed ; 

* By the ruin he hath spread ; 

By the prayers which rise for curses on his head, — 

Redeem, O France ! thine ancient fame. 

Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame, 

Open thine eyes ! — too long hast thou been blind ; 

Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind ! 

By those horrors which the night 

Witness'd when the torches' light 

To the assembled murderers show'd 

Where the blood of Conde flow'd ; 

By thy murder'd Pichegru's fame ; 

By murder'd Wright — an English name; 

By murder'd Palm's atrocious doom ; 

By murder'd Hofer's martyrdom, — 

Oh! by the virtuous blood thus vilely spilt. 

The villain's owiT peculiar, private guilt. 

Open thine eyes ! — too long hast thou been blind ; 

Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind ! 



THE HOLLY-TREE. 

Reader ! hast thou ever stood to see 

The holly-tree 1 
The eye that contemplates it well perceives 

Its glossy leaves 
Order'd by an intelligence so wise, 
As might confound the Atheist's sophistries. 

Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen 

Wrinkled and keen ; 
No grazing cattle through their prickly round 

Can reach to wound ; 
But as they grow where nothing is to fear, 
Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear. 

1 love to view these things with curious eyes, 

And moralize; 
And in this wisdom of the holly-tree 

Can emblem see 
Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, 
One which may profit in the after time. 

Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear 

Harsh and austere, 
To those who on my leisure would intrude 

Reserved and rude. 
Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be, 
Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree. 

And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know, 

Some harshness show. 
All vain asperities I day by day 

Would wear away. 
Till the smooth temper of my age should be 
Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree. 

And as, when all the summer trees are seen 

So bright and green. 
The holly leaves a sober hue display 

Less bright than they ; 



But when the bare and wintry woods we see, 
What then so cheerful as the holly-tree 1 

So serious should my youth appear among 

The thoughtless throng ; 
So would I seem amid the young and gay 

More grave than they. 
That in my age as cheerful I might be 
As the green winter of the holly-tree. 



THE DEAD FRIEND. 

Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul. 

Descend to contemplate 

The form that once was dear ! 

The spirit is not there 

Which kindled that dead eye. 

Which throbb'd in that cold heart. 

Which in that motionless hand 

Hath met thy friendly grasp. 

The spirit is not there ! 

It is but lifeless, perishable flesh 

That moulders in the grave ; 

Earth, air, and water's ministering particles 

Now to the elements 

Resolved, their uses done. 

Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul, 

Follow thy friend beloved ; 

The spirit is not there ! 

Often together have we talk'd of death ; 

How sweet it were to see 

All doubtful things made clear; 

How sweet it were with powers 

Such as the Cherubim, 

To view the depth of heaven ! 

O Edmund ! thou hast first 

Begun the travel of eternity ! 

I look upon the stars, 

And think that thou art there, 

Unfetter'd as the thought that follows thee. 

And we have often said how sweet it were 

With unseen ministry of angel power, 

To watch the friends we loved. 

Edmund ! we did not err! 

Sure I have felt thy presence ! Thou hast given 

A birth to holy thought, 

Hast kept me from the world unstain'd and pure. 

Edmund ! we did not err ! 

Our best affections here. 

They are not like the toys of infancy ; 

The soul outgrows them not; 

We do not cast them off; 

O, if it could he so. 

It were indeed a dreadful thing to die ! 

Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul, 

Follow thy friend beloved! 

But in the lonely hour. 

But in the evening walk, 

Think that he companies thy solitude ; 

Think that he holds with thee 

Mysterious intercourse ; 

And though remembrance wake a tear, 

There will be joy in grief. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



97 



THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM. 

It was a summer evening, 
Old Kaspar's work was done 

Anil he before his cottage door 
Was sitting in the sun, 

And by him sported on tlie green 

His httle grandchild Wilhehnine. 

She saw her brother Peterkin 
Roll something large and round, 

Which he beside the rivulet 
In playing there had found ; 

He came to ask what he had found, 

That was so large, and smooth, and round. 

Old Kaspar took it from the boy. 

Who stood expectant by ; 
And then the old man shook his head, 
And with a natural sigh, 
"'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he, 
<■ Who fell in the great victory. 

"I find them in the garden. 

For there's many here about; 
And often, when I go to plough. 

The ploughshare turns them out! 
For many thousand men," said he, 
" Were slain in that great victory." 

"Now tell us whit 'twas all about," 
Young Peterkin he cries ; 
While little Wilhelmino looks up, 
With wonder-waiting eyes; 
"Now tell us all about the war, 
And what they kill'd each othe^ for." 

"It was the English," Kaspar cried, 
"Who put the French to rout; 
But what they kill'd each other for, 

I could not well make out. 
But everybody said," quoth he, 
" That 't was a famous victory. 

" My father lived at Blenheim then, 

Yon little stream hard by ; 
They burnt his dwelling to the ground. 

And he was forced to fly; 
So with his wife and child he fled. 
Nor had he where to rest his head. 

" With fire and sword the country round 

Was wasted far and wide ; 
And many a childing mother then. 

And new-()orn baby died ; 
But things like that, you know, must be 
At every famous victory. 

" They say it was a shocking sight 

After the field was won ; 
For many thousand bodies here 

Lay rotting in the sun ; 
But things like that, you know, must be 
After a famous victory. 

"Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won, 
And our good prince Eugene." 

"Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!" 
Said little Wilhelmine. 
13 



" Nay — nay — my little girl," quoth he, 
"It was a famous victory. 

"And everybody praised the Duke 
Who this great fight did win." 

"And what good came of it at last I" 
Quoth little Peterkin. 

" Why, that I cannot tell," said he, 

"But 'twas a famous victory." 



REMEMBRANCE. 

The remeiiihraiice of youth is a sigh. — .^li. 

Max hath a weary pilgrima2:e 
As through the world he wends ; 
On every stage, from youth to age, 

Still discontent attends; 
With heaviness he casts his eye 

Upon the road before. 
And still remembers with a sigh 
The days that are no more. 

To school the little exile goes. 

Torn from his mother's arms, — 

What then shall soothe his earliest woes, 

When novelty hath lost its charms'! 
Condemn'd to suffer through the day 
Restraints which no rewards repay. 
And cares where love has no concern, 
Hope leniftluMis as she counts the hours 
Before his vvish'd return. 
From hard control and tyrant rules. 
The unfeeling discipline of schools, 

In thought he loves to roam. 
And fears will struggle in his eye, 
While he remembers with a sigh 
The comforts of his home. 

Youth comes ; the toils and cares of life 

Torment the restless mind ; 
W^here shall the tired and harass'd heart 
Its consolation find ] 
Then is not Youth, as Fancy tells, 

Life's summer prime of joy] 
Ah no! for hopes too long delay'J 
And feelings blasted or betray'd. 

Its fabled bliss destroy ; 

And Youth remembers with a sigh 

The careless days of Infancy. 

Maturer Manhood now arrives. 
And other thoughts come on, 
But with the baseless hopes of Youth 

Its generous warmth is gone ; 
Cold, calculating cares succeed, 
The timid thought, the wary deed. 

The dull realities of truth; 
Back on the past he turns his eye. 
Remembering, with an envious sigh, 
The happy dreams of Youth. 
So reaches he the latter stage 
Of this our mortal pilgrimage. 

With feeble step and slow ; 

New ills that latter stage await, 

And old Experience learns too late 

That all is vanity below. 



Life's vain delusions are gone by ; 

Its idle hopes are o'er ; 
Yet Age remembers with a sigh 

The days that are no more. 



RODERICK IN BATTLE. 

Count Julian's soldiers and the Astnrian host 
Set up a shout, a joyful shout, which rung 
Wide through the welkin. Their exulting cry 
With louder acclamation was renew'd, 
When from the expiring miscreant's neck they saw 
That Roderick took the siiield, and round his own 
Hung it, and vaulted in the seat. My horse! 
My noble horse! he cried, with flattering hand 
Patting his high-arch'd neck ! the renegade — 
I thank him for't — hath kept thee daintily ! 
Orelio, thou art in thy beauty still, 
'J'hy pride and strength ! Orelio, my good horse, 
Once more thou bearest to the field thy lord, 
He who so oft hath fefl and cherish'd thee, 
He for whose sake, wherever thou wert seen, 
Thou wert by all men honour'd. Once again 
'i'hou hast thy proper master ! Do thy part 
As thou wert wont ; and bear him gloriously, 
My beautiful Orelio, — to the last — 
The happiest of his fields ! — Then he drew forth 
The cimeter, and, waving it alott, 
Rode toward the troops ; its unaccustom'd shape 
Disliked him. Renegade in all things ! cried 
'i'he Goth, and cast it from him ; to the chiefs 
Then said, If I have done ye service here, 
Help me, I pray you, to a Spanish sword ! 
The trutiest blade that e'er in Bilbilis 
Was dipp'd, would not to-day be misbestowed 
On this right hand ! — Go, some one,G underick cried, 
And bring Count Julian'ssword. Whoe'erthou art, 
The worth which thou hast shown avenging him 
Entitles thee to wear it. But thou goest 
For battle unequipp'd — haste there, and strip 
Yon villain of his armour ! I.ate he spake. 
So fast tlie Moors came on. It matters not, 
Replied the Goth; there's many a mountaineer. 
Who in no better armour cased this day 
Than his wonted leathern gipion, will be found 
In the hottest battle, yet bring oil" untouch'd 
The unguarded life he ventures. — Taking then 
Count Julian's sword, he fitted round his wrist 
The chain, and eyeing the elaborate steel 
With stern regard of joy — The African 
Under unhappy stars was born, he cried, 
Who tastes thy edge ! — ^^Make ready for the charge ! 
They come — they come! — On, brethren, to the 

field !— 
The word is, Vengeance ! 

Vengeance was the word ; 
From man to man, and rank to rank it pass'd, 
By every heart enforced, by every voice 
Sent forth in loud defiance of the foe. 
The enemy in shriller sounds return'd 
Their Akbar and the prophet's trusted name. 
The horsemen lower'd their spears, the infantry. 
Deliberately, with slow and steady step, [hiss'd, 
Advanced ; the bow-strings twang'd, and arrows 



And javelins hurtled by. Anon the hosts 
Met in the shock of battle, horse and man [mace, 
Conflicting; shield struck shield, and sword, and 
And curtle-axe on helm and buckler rung ; 
Armour was riven, and wounds were interchanged, 
A nd many a spirit from its mortal hold 
Hurried to bliss or bale. Well did the chiefs 
Of Julian's army in that hour support 
Their old esteem ; and well Count Pedro there 
Enhanced his former praise; and by his side. 
Rejoicing like a bridegroom in the strife, 
Alplionso through the host of infidels 
Bore on his bloody lance dismay and death. 
But there was worst confusion and uproar, 
There widest slaughter and dismay, where, proud 
Of his recover'd lord, Orelio plunged 
Through thickest ranks, trampling beneath his feet 
The living and the dead. VV'here'er he turns, 
The Moors divide and fly. What man is this, 
Appall'd they say, who to the front of war 
Bareheaded ofl'ers thus his naked life ? 
Replete with power he is, and terrible, 
Like some destroying angel ! Sure his lips 
Have drank of Kafs dark fountain, and he comes 
Strong in his immortality ! Fly ! fly ! 
They said ; this is no human foe ! — Nor less 
Of wonder fill'd the Spaniards when they saw 
How flight and terror went before his way, 
And shuighter in his path. Behold, cries one, 
With what command and knightly ease he sits 
The intrepid steed, and deals from side to side 
His dreadful blows ! Not Roderick in his power 
Bestrode with such command and majesty 
That noble war-horse. His loose robe this day 
Is death's black banner, shaking from its folds 
Dismay and ruin. Of no mortal mould 
Is he who in that garb of peace aflronts 
Whole hosts, and sees them scatter where he turns ! 
Auspicious Heaven beholds us, and some saint 
Revisits earth ! 



NIGHT. 



How beautiful is night! 

A dewy freshness fills the silent air ; 

No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain. 

Breaks the serene of heaven . 

In full-orb'd glory yonder moon divine 

Rolls through the dark-blue depths. 

Beneath her steady ray 

The desert-circle spreads, 

Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. 

How beautiful is night ! 

Who, at this untimely hour, 

Wanders o'er the desert sands ? 

No station is in view. 

Nor palm-grove, islanded amid the waste. 

The mother and her child, 

The widow'd mother and the fatherless boy, 

They at this untimely hour, 

Wander o'er the desert sands. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



99 



ALAODIN'S PARADISE. 

And oh ! what odours the voluptuous vale 

Scatters from jasmine bowers, 

From yon rose wilderness, 
From cluster'd lierina, and from orange groves 

That with such perfume fill the breeze, 

As Peris to their sister bear, 
When from the summit of some lofty tree 
She hangs, engaged, the captive of the Dives. 
They from their pinions shake 

The sweetness of celestial flowers ; 

And as her enemies imjiure 
From that impetuous poison flir away 
Fly groaning with the torment, she the while 
Inhales her fragrant food. 

Such odours flow'd upon the world, 

When at Mohammed's nuptials, word 

Went forth in heaven to roil 
The everlasting gates of paradise 
Back on their living hinges, that its gales 
Might visit all below : the general bliss 
Thrill'd every bosom, and the family 
Of man, for once, partook a common joy. 



LISTENING TO STORMS. 

'Tis pleasant, by the cheerful hearth, to hear 
Of tempests, and the dangers of the deep. 
And pause at times, and feel that we are safe ; 
Then listen to the perilous tale again, 
And with an eager and suspended soul, 
Woo terror to delight us; but to hear 
The roaring of the raging elements. 
To know all human skill, all human strength, 
Avail not; to look round and only see 
The mountain wave incumbent, with its weight 
Of bursting waters, o'er the reeling bark, — 
O God, this is indeed a dreadful thing ! 
And he who hath endured the horror once 
Of such an hour, doth never hear tbe storm 
Howl round his home, but he remembers it, 
And thinks upon the sufl'ering mariner ! 



CHILDHOOD OF JOAN OF ARC. 

Hkrf, in solitude 
My soul was nurst, amid the loveliest scenes 
Of unpolluted nature. Sweet it was. 
As the white mists of morning roU'd away. 
To see the mountains' wooded heights appear 
Dark in the early dawn, and mark its slope. 
Rich with the blossom'd furze, as the slant sun 
On the goMen ripeness pour'd a deepening light. 
Pleasant, at noon, beside the vocal brook. 
To lie me down and watch the floating clouds, 
And shape to fancy's wild similitudes 
Their ever-varying forms; and ho, most sweet! 
To drive my flock at evening to the fold, 
And hasten to our little hut, and hear 
The voice of kindness bid me welcome home. 



EPITAPH. 

This to a mother's sacred memory 
Her son hath hallow'd. Absent many a year 
Far over sea, his sweetest dreams were still 
Of that dear voice which sooth'd his infancy : 
And after many a fight against the Moor 
And Malabar, or that fierce cavalry 
Which he had seen covering the boundless plain 
Even to the utmost limits where the eye 
Could pierce the far horizon, — his first thought, 
In safety, was of her, who, when she heard 
The tale of that day's danger, would retire 
And pour her pious gratitude to heaven 
In prayers and tears of joy. The Hngering hour 
Of his return, long-look'd for, came at length, 
And full of hope he reach'd his native shore. 
Vain hope that puts its trust in human life ! 
For ere he came the number of her days 
Was full. O reader, what a world were this, 
How unendurable its weight, if tiiey 
Whom Death hath sunder'd did not meet again! 



A SUB-MARINE CITY. 

TuETn golden summits in the noonday light. 

Shone o'er the <lark-green deep that roll'd between ; 

For domes and pinnacles, and spires were seen 

Peering above the sea — a mournful sight ! 
Well might the sad beholder ween from thence 

What works of wonder the devouring wave 

Had swallow'd tliere, when monuments so brave 

Bore record of their old magnificence. 

And on the sandy shore, beside the verge 

Of ocean, here and there a rock-hewn fane 

Resisted in its strength the surf and surge 

That on their deep foundations beat in vain. 

In solitude the ancient temples stood, 

Once resonant with instrument and song, 

And solemn dance of festive multitude ; 

Now as the weary ages pass along, 

Hearing no voice save of the ocean flood, 

Which roars for ever on the restless shores ; 

Or, visiting their solitary caves. 

The lonely sound of winds, that moan around. 

Accordant to the melancholy waves. 



AN EASTERN EVENING. 

EvF.>-iNa comes on : arising from the stream, 
Homeward the tall flamingo wings his flight; 
And where he sails athvs'art the setting beam. 
His scarlet plumage glows with <leeper light. 
The watchman, at the wish'd ajiproach of night, 

Gladly forsakes the field, where he all day, 

To scare the winged plunderers from their prey, 

With shout and sling, on yonder clay-built height. 

Hath borne the sultry ray. 

Hark ! at the Golden Palaces, 

The Bramin strikes the hour. 

For leagues and leagues around, the brazen sound 

Rolls through the stillness of departing day, 

Like thunder far away. 



100 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



THE LOCUST CLOUD. 

Onward they came, a dark continuous cloud 

Of congregitcd myriads numheilcss, 
The rushing of whose wings was as tlie sound 

Of a broad river, headlong in its course 

Plunged from a mountaiii summit; or the roar 

Of a wild ocean in the autumn storm. 

Shattering its billows on a shore of rocks. 

Onward they came, the winds impell'd them on, 

Their work was done, their path of ruin past, 

Their graves were ready in tlie wilderness. 

" Behold the mighty army !" Moath cried, 

" Blindly they move, impell'd 

By the blind clement. 

And yonder birds, our welcome visitants, 

Lo ! where they soar above the embodied host, 

Pursue their way, and hang upon their rear, 

And thin their spreading flanks, 

Rejoicing o'er their banquet! Deemest thou 

The scent of water on some Syrian mosque 

Placed with priest-mummery, and the jargon-rites 

Which fool the multitude, hath led them here 

From far Khora-^san ] Allah, who decreed 

Yon tribe the plague and punishin'Mit 4if min, 

These also hath he doom'd to meet their way : 

Both passive instruments 

Of his all-acting will, 

Sole mover he, and only spring of all." 



EVENING. 

Tiins having said, the pious sufferer sate, 
Beholding with fix'd eyes that lovely orb, 
Till quiet tears confused in dizzy light 
The broken moonheans. They too by the toil 
Of spirit, as by travail of the day 
Subdued, were silent, yielding to the hour. 
The silver cloud diffusing slowly past, 
And now into its airy elements 
Resolved is gone; while through the azure depth 
Alone in heaven the glorious moon pursues 
Her course appointed, with indilferent beams 
Shining upon the silent hills around, 
And the dark tents of that unholy host. 
Who, all unconscious of impending fate. 
Take their last slumber there. The camp is still ; 
The fires have moulder'd, and the breeze which stirs 
The soft and snowy embers, just lays bare 
At times a red and evanescent light. 
Or for a moment wakes a feeble flame. 
They by the fountain hear the stream below. 
Whose murmurs, as the wind arose or fell. 
Fuller or fainter reach the ear attuned. 
And now the nightingale, not distant far. 
Began her solitary song; and pour'd 
To the cold moon a richer, stronger strain 
Than that with which the lyric lark salutes 
The new-born day. Her deep and thrilling song 
Seem'd with its piercing melody to reach 
The soul, and in mysterious unison 



Blend with all thoughts of gentleness and love. 
Their hearts were open to the healing power 
Of nature ; and the splendour of the night. 
The flow of waters, and that sweetest lay, 
Came to them like a copious evening dew 
Falling on vernal herbs which thirst for rain. 



IMMORTALITY OF LOVE. 

Thv.t sin who tell us love can die. 

With life all other passions fly. 

All others are but vanitj' ; 

In heaven ambition cannot dwell, 

Nor avarice in the vaults of hell ; 

Earthly these passions of the earth. 

They perish where they have their birth ; 

But love is indestructible : 

Its holy flame for ever burnetii, 

From heaven it came, to heaven retumeth. 

Too oft on earth a troubled guest, 

At times deceived, at times oppress'd. 

It here is tried and purified. 
Then hath in heaven its perfect rest : 

It soweth here with toil and care, 

But the harvest-time of love is there. 

Oh ! when a mother meets on high 

The babe she lost in infancy, 

Hath she not then, for pains and fears, 

The day of wo, the watchful night, 

For all her sorrow, all her tears. 

An over-pay ment of delight ? 



STANZAS. 

Mr d;iys among the dead are pass'd ; 

Around me I behold, 
Where'er these casual eyes are cast, 

The mighty minds of old ; 
My never-failing friends are they. 
With whom I converse day by day. 

With them I take delight in weal. 

And seek relief in wo; 
And while I understand and feel 

How much to them I owe. 
My cheeks have often been bedew'd 
With tears of thoughtful gratitude. 

My thoughts are with the dead ; with them 

I live in long-past years ; 
Their virtues love, their faults condemn, 

Partake their hopes and fears. 
And from their lessons seek and find 
Instruction with an humble mind. 

My hopes are with the dead ; anon 

My place with them will be, 
And I with them shall travel on 

Through all futurity : 
Yet leaving here a name, I trust. 
That will not perish in the dust. 



WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR. 



Landor was born, we are told in the " Book 
of Gems," from which we gain our scanty bio- 
graphical information of him, at Ipsley Court, 
the seat of his family in Warwickshire, in 
January, 1775. He was educated at Rugby. 
He has spent a large portion of his time abroad 
upon the continent, in Spain, where he was 
intimately concerned in its politics, and in 
Italy, where he occupied a villa at Fies de in 
the vicinity of Florence. He now resides in 
England, and is not an unfrequent contributor 
to the London Examiner, where his pungent, 
exact style betrays no marks of weakness or 
age. His last articles have been upon the 
alfvUrs of Greece, and the proposed monu- 
ment to his friend Southey at Bristol. The 
cause of liberty and truth has always inspired 
his pen. What he sees he sees clearly and 
expresses vividly. His great prose work, 
the "Imaginary Conversations," is full of 
nibble thoughts, carved out as in statuary. 
His "Pericles and Aspasia" is worthy to be 
written in the original Greek, where Greek is 
classic. We know no author whose writings 
breathe a more conscious presence of nobility. 
His thought is perfect and entire, calm, clear, 
independent : it does not attempt to make j'^ou 
a convert; it is there without any declamation 
of apology, for you to return to it or not, as 
you choose ; but you do return to it, fascinated 
by its brightness and single grandeur. Lan- 
dor presents himself to us in his writings as 
a proud, intellectual man, and inflexible lover 
of truth, though not insensible to prejudice; 
of a native nobility of soul, quickly impressed 
by the show of manliness and worth ; a sincere 
friend, and what, with a man of his tempera- 
ment, is its correlative, a good hater ; a fas- 
tidious, educated man, who carries his moral 
sensitiveness into the world of literature ; a 
lover of poetry, himself a poet. Mr. Landor's 
poetry, however, is the poetry of the intellect 
rather than the heart: it is indeed the sweet 
flower of a virtuous life, "of high erected 
thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy," but 
its images are single, isolated, a succession 
of brilliant mountain peaks, with hardly the 
warmth and continuous life of the sunny 



plains. It is the transposition of his prose, 
which is saying that his prose is eloquent, 
refined, poetical. There is no lyric flow, no 
flood of passion. His longest poem, " Gebir,"* 
was originall^r partly written in Latin, and is 
a work of great polish and strength in parts; 
as a whole it is weak, and tells no story worth 
telling. But this is to say what it is not — a 
barren style of criticism. It is a succession 
of costly pictures, of rare dramatic scenes ; a 
collection of images glowing with thought, 
full of feuiinine tenderness by the side of 
manly beauty, a poetic quarry, or rather an un- 
inhabited but kingly furnished palace, stored 
with marbles, and vases, and cabinet paintings, 
but wanting the living tide of life. The sub- 
ject, however, admits of this treatment. It 
is one of Egyptian enchantment. In the old 
land of the Sphinx and Memnon, and the Pyra- 
mids, we may be content to dwell wnth statues, 
and walk admiringly among the silent wonders 
of art. " Gebir" does not break the spell. 

Mr. Landor has written "Count Julian, a 
Tragedy," and several Dramatic Sketches. 
He stands very high among the unacted 
dramatists of the present day, and they are 
neither small nor unsuccessful as a body, but 
he needs thfe warm, unconscious humanity of 
Shakspeare to melt the icy intellect in the 
flowing heart. 

If we fail in this to convey a lofty idea of 
Mr. Landor's powers, we fail cf our mean- 
ing; we are enthusiasts for his merits, but 
they are for the few, not for the many : he 
is sarcastical and satirical, and the world, 've 
suspect, will take him for a misanthrope, and 
pronounce his writings impracticable. As- 
suredly, they are not popular, but they are 
scholarlike and profound: let his future tians- 
lators reconcile the difference. They can build 
many a domestic home and hearthstone out of 
his one pinnacled marble castle. 

* Pillilir^li-d hv iMoxov, in IS.'il, wilh " Ooi 
and other ilrnnatir and minor imnrns '''■■•- 



int .Iiilian" 
T-is, with two 



and other drunatir and minor imnrns. T-is, with two 
drainHlir iii.Mps, " Andrea of Iliiiiearx-." and "Girvanni 
• f Naples,"' prinlpd for the benefit of (JiiACE Darlino, 
by Rentley, in l.^HO; the verses in his prose works, 
and some rontribiii ions to the ".MlKiia^uiii." the "Ex- 
aminer," and to tile Annuals, are his only published 
poems. 



102 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



TAMAR RELATES TO GEBIR HIS FIRST 
ENCOUNTER WITH THE NYMPH. 

" 'TwAs evening, tho' not sunset, and spring tide, 
Level with these green meadows, seom'd still higher. 
'Twas pleasant ; and I loosen'd from my neck 
The pipe you gave nie, and began to play. 
Oh that I ne'er had learnt the tuneful art ! 
It always brings us enemies or love ! 
Well, I was playing, when above the waves 
Some swimmer's head methought I saw ascend ; 
I, sitting still, survey'd it, with my'pipe 
Awkwardly held before my lips half-closed. 
Gebir ! it was a nymph ! a nymph divine ! 
I cannot wait describing how she came, 
How I was sitting, how she first a.ssumcd 
The sailor ; of what happened there remains 
Enough to say, and too much to forget. 
The sweet deceiver stept upon this bank 
Before I was aware ; for with surprise 
Moments fly rapid as with love itself. 
Stooping to tune afresh the hoarsen'd reed, 
I heard a rustling, and where that arose 
My glance first litrhted on her nimble feet. 
Her feet resembled those long shells explored 
By him who to befriend his steed's dim sight 
Would blow the pungent powder in the eye. 
Her eyes too I O iinmortal gods ! her eyes 
Resembled — what could they resemble ? what 
Ever resemble those ! E'en her attire 
Was not of wonted woof nor vulgar art: 
Her muntle show'd the yellow samphire-pod, 
Her girdle, the dove-coloured wave serene. 
'Shepherd,' said slie, 'and will you wrestle now. 
And with the sailor's hardier race engage?' 
I was rejoiced to hear it. and contrived 
How to keep up contention ; could I fail 
By pressing not too strongly, yet to press ? 
' Whether a shepherd, as indeed you seem. 
Or whether of the hardier race you boast, 
I am not daunted ; no, I will engage. 
But first,' said she, ' what wager will you lay V 
'A sheep,' I answered ; 'add whate'er you will.' 
'I cannot,' she replied, ' make that return: 
Our hided vessels in their pitchy round 
Seldom, unless from rapine, hold a sheep. 
But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue 
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed 
In the sun's p vlace porch, where, when unyoked. 
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave : 
Shake one, and it awakens ; then apply 
Its polish'd lips to your attentive ear. 
And it remembers its august abodes, 
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. 
And I have others given me t)y the nymphs, 
Of sweeter sound than any pipe you have. 
But we, by Neptur)e, for no pipe contend. 
This tipie a sheep I win, a pipe the next.' 
Now came she forward, eager to engage, 
But first her dress, her bosom then survey'd. 
And heaved it, doubting if she could deceive. 
Her bosi)m seem'd, enclosed in haze like heaven. 
To baffle touch, and rose forth undefined : 
Above her knees she drew the robe succinct, 



Above her breast, and just below her arms. 

' This will preserve my breath when tightly bound, 

If struggle and equal strength should so constrain.' 

Thus, pulling hard to fasten it, she spake. 

And, rushing at me, closed : I thrill'd throughout, 

And seem'd to lessen and shrink up with cold. 

Again with violent impulse gush'd my blood. 

And hearing naught external, thus absorb'd, 

I heard it, rushing through each turbid vein, 

Shake my unsteady swimming sight in air. 

Yet with unyielding though uncertain arms 

I clung around her neck; the vest beneath 

Rustled against our slippery limbs entwined: 

Often mine springing with eluded force 

Started aside, and trembled till replaced : 

And when I most succeeded, as I thought. 

My bosom an 1 my throat felt so comprest, 

That life was almost quivering on my lips, 

Yet nothing was tliere painful ! There are signs 

Of secret arts,aud not of human might — 

What arts I cannot tell. I only know 

My eyes errew dizzy, and my strength decay'd. 

I was indeed o'ercome ! with what regret. 

And more, with what confusion, when I reached 

The fold, and yielding up the sheep, she cried: 

' This pays a shepherd to a conquering maid.' 

She smiled, and more of pleasure than disdain 

Was in her dimpled chin and liberal lip. 

And eyes that languish'd lengthening, just like love. 

She went awav ; I on the wicker gate 

Leant, and could follow with my eyes alone. 

The sheep she carried easy as a cloak ; 

But when I heard its bleating, as I did, 

And saw, she hastening on, its hinder feet 

Struggle, and from her snowy shoulder slip — 

One shoulder its poor ellorts had unveil'd — 

Then ill my passions mingling fell in tears ; 

Restless then ran I to the highest ground 

To watch her — she was gone — gone down the tide — 

And the long moonbeam on the hard wet sand 

Lay like a jasper column half-uprear'd." 



PASSAGE FROM COUNT JULIAN. 



J'tlkin. O cruelty — to them indeed the least ! 
My children, ye are happy — ye have lived 
Of heart unconquered, honour unimpaired. 
And died, true Spaniards, loyal to the last. 

Muza. Away with him. 

Julian, Slaves! not before I lift 
My voice to heaven and man : though enemies 
Surround me, and none else, yet other men 
And other times shall hear: the agony 
Of an opprest and of a bursting heart 
No violence can silence; at its voice 
The trumpet is o'erpower'd, and glory mute. 
And peace and war hide all their charms alike. 
Surely the guests and ministers of heaven 
Scatter it forth thro' all the elements ; 
So suddenly, so widely, it extends. 
So fearfullv men breathe it, shuddering 
To ask or fancy how it first arose. 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



103 



FiESULAN IDYL. 

HEUF.,where precipitate Spring with one light bound 

Into hot Summer's lusty arms ex[)ires ; 

And where go forth at morn, at eve, at night, 

Soft airs, that want the lute to play with them. 

And softer sighs, that know not what they want: 

Under a wall, beneath an orange-tree, 

Whose tallest flowers could tell the lowlier ones 

Of sights in Fiesole right up above, 

•While I was gazing a few paces olF 

At what they seemed to show me with their nods. 

Their frequent whispers and their pointing shoots, 

A gentle maid came down the garden steps, 

And gathered the pure treasure in her lap. 

I heard the branches rustle, and stept forth 

To drive the ox away, or mule, or goat, 

(Such I believed it must be;) for sweet scents 

Are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts, 

And nurse and pillow the dull memory 

That would let drop without them her best stores. 

They bring me talcs of youth and tones of love, 

And 'tis and ever was my wish and way 

To let all flowers live freely, and all die. 

Whene'er their genius bid their souls depart, 

Among their kindred in their native place. 

I never pluck the rose ; the violet's head 

Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank 

And not reproach'd me; the ever sacred cup 

Of the pure lily hath between my hands 

Felt safe, unsoil'd. nor lost one grain of gold. 

I saw the light that made the glossy leaves 

More glossy ; the fair arm, the fairer cheek 

Wanned by the eye intent on its pursuit; 

I saw the foot, that, although half-erect 

From its gray slipper, could not lift her u]) 

To what she wanted: I held down a branch 

And gather'd her some blossoms, since their hour 

Was come, and bees had wounded them, and flies 

Of harder wing were working their way through 

And scattering thefn in fragments under foot. 

So crisp were some", they rattled unavolved, 

Others, ere broken oft', fell into shells. 

For such appear the petals when detach'd. 

Unbending, brittle, lucid, white like snow, 

And like snow not seen through, liy eye or sun: 

Yet every one her gown received from me 

Was fairer than the first— I thought not so, 

But so she prais 'd them to reward my care. 

I said : ''You find the largest." 

" This indeed," 
Cried she, " is large and sweet." 

She held one forth. 
Whether for me to look at or to take 
She knew not, nor did I; but taking it 
Would best have solved (and this she felt) her doubts. 
I dared not touch it ; for it seemed a part 
Of her own self; fresh, full, the most mature 
Of blossoms, yet a hiossoni ; with a touch 
To fall, and yet unfallen. 

She drew bnck 
The boon she tendered, and then, finding not 
The ribbon at her waist to fix it in, 
Dropt it, as loth to drop it, on the rest. 



TO lANTHE, 

Whilf, the winds whistle round my cheerless room, 
And the pale morning droops with winter's gloom; 
While indistinct lie rude and cultured lands. 
The ripening harvest and the hoary sands: 
Alone, and destitute of every page 
That fires the poet, or informs the .sage, 
Where shall my wishes, where my fancy rove, 
Rest upon past or cherish promised love ! 
Alas ! the past I never can regain. 
Wishes may ri.^e, and tears may flow in vain. 
Fancy, that shows her in her early bloom. 
Throws barren sunshine o'er the unyielding tomb. 
What then would passion, what would reason do] 
Sure, to retrace is worse than to pursue. 
Here will I sit, 'till heaven shall cease to lour. 
And hatjpier Hesper bring the appointed hour; 
Gaze on the mingled waste of sky and sea. 
Think of my love, and bid her think of me. 



TO CORINTH. 

QuKEX of the double sea, beloved of him 

Who shakes the world's foundations, thou hast seen 

Glory in all her beauty, all her forms; 

Seen her walk back with Theseus when he left 

The bones of Sciron bleaching to the wind, 

Above the ocean's roar and c(umorant's flight, 

So high that vastest billows from above 

Show but like herbage waving in the mead ; 

Seen generations throng thy Isthmian games, 

And pass away — the beautiful, the brave, 

And them who sang their praises. 

But. O queen, 
Audible still, and far beyond thy cliffs. 
As when they first were uttered, are those words 
Divine which praised the valiant and the just; 
And tears have often stopt, upon that ridge 
So perilous, him who brought before his eye 
The Colchian ba'.ies. 

" Stay ! spare him ! save the last! 
Medea ! — is that blood 1 again ! it drops 
From my imploring hand upon my feet ! — 
I will invoke the Eumenides no more. 
I will forgive thee — bless thee — bend to thee 
In all thy wishes — do but thou, Medea, 
Tell me, one lives." 

"And shall I too deceive V 
Cries from the fiery ear an angry voice; 
And swifter than two falling stars descend 
Two breathless bodies — warm, soft, motionless, 
As flowers in stillest noon before the sun, 
They lie three paces from him — such they lie 
As when he left them sleeping side by side, 
A mother's arm round each, a mother's cheeks 
Between them, flushed with hajjpiness and love. 
He was more changed than they were — iloonied to 

show 
Thee and the stranger, how defaced and scarred 
Grief hunts us down the precipice of jears. 
And whom the faithless prey upon the last 



104 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



To give the inertest masses of our earth 
Her lovehest forms was thine, to fix the gods 
Within thy walls, and hang their tripods round 
With fruits and foliage knowing nut decay. 
A nobler work remains : thy citadel 
Invites all Greece ; o'er lands and floods remote 
Many are the hearts that still beat high for thee : 
Confide then in thy strength, and unappalled 
Look down upon the plain, while yokeinate kings 
Run bellowing, where their herdsjnen goad them on ; 
Instinct is sharp in them, and terror true — 
They smell the floor whereon their necks must lie. 



STANZAS. 

Sat ye, that years roll on and ne'er return T 
Say ye, the sun who leaves them all behind, 
Their great creator, cannot bring one back 
With all his force, though he draw worlds around ] 
Witness me, little streams ! that meet before 
My happy dwelling; witness, Africo 
And Mensola ! that ye have seen at one* 
Twenty roll back, twenty as swift and bright 
As are your swiftest and your brightest waves. 
When the tall cypress o'er the Doccia 
Hurls from his inmost boughs the latent snow. 

Go, and go happy, pride of my past days 
And solace of my present, thou whom fate 
Alone hath sever'd from me ! One step higher 
Must yet be mounted, high as was the last: 
Friendship, with faltering accent, says depart ! 
And take the highest seat below the crown'd. 



WORSHIP GOD ONLY. 

Lies. Revere our holy church ; though some 
within 
Have erred, and some are slow to lead us riarht, 
Stopping to pry when stail" and lamp should be 
In hand, and the way whiten underneath. 

Pedro. Ines. the church is now a charnel-house. 
Where all that is not rottenness is drowth. 
Thou hast but seen its gate hung round with flowers. 
And heard the music whose serenest waves 
Cover its gulfs and dally with its shoals, 
And hold the myriad insects in light play 
Above it. loth to leave its sunny sides. 
Look at this central edifice ! come close! 
Men's bones and marrow its materials Axe, 
Men's groans inaugurated it. men's tears 
Sprinkle its floor, fires lighted up with men 
Are censers for it; agony and anger 
Surround it night and day with sleepless eyes; 
Dissimulation, terror, treachery. 
Denunciations of the child, the parent. 
The sister, brother, lover, (mark me. Ines !) 
Are the peace-ofTerings God receives from it. 

Ines. I tremble — but betrayers tremble more. 
Now cease, cease, Pedro ! cling I must to somewhat : 
Leave me one guide, one rest! Let me love God! 
Alone — if it must be so ! 

Pedro. Him alone — 
Mind; in him only .place thy trust henceforth. 



THE TAMED DORMOUSE. 

There is a creature, dear to Heaven, 
Tiny and weak, to whom is given 
To enjoy the world while suns are bright, 
And shut grim winter from its sight — 
Tamest of hearts that beat on wilds, 
Tamer and tenderer than a child's — 
The Dormouse — this he loved and taught 
(Docile it is the day it's caught. 
And fond of music, voice or string) 
To stand before and hear her .sing. 
Or lie within her palm half-closed. 
Until another's interposed. 
And claim'd the alcove wherein it lay. 
Or held it with divided sway. 



TO A DEAD CHILD. 

CnrT.n of a day, thou knowest not 
The tears that overflow thy urn, 

The gushing eyes that read thy lot, 
Nor, if thou knewest, couldst return ! 

And why the wish? the pure and blest 
Watch like thy mother o'er thy sleep; 

O peaceful night ! O envied rest ! 
Thou wilt not ever see her weep. 



ON THE DEATH OF SOUTHEY. 

Not the last struggle of the sun. 
Precipitated from his golden throne. 
Hold darkling mortals in sublime suspense. 
But the calm exod of a man 
Nearer, though high above, who ran 
The race we run, when Heaven recalls him hence. 

Thus, O thou pure of earthly taint! 
Thus, O my Sohthet ! poet, sage, and saint, 
Tliou, after saddest silence, art removed. 

What voice in anguish can we raise T 
Thee would we, need we, dare we praise ? 
God now does that — the God thy whole heart loved. 



SIXTEEN. 

tv Clementina's artless inien 

Lu''illa asks me what I see. 
And are the roses of sixteen 

Enough for me 1 

Lucilla asks, if that be all ; 

Have I not cull'd as sweet before — 
Ah, yes Lucilla ! and their fall 
I still deplore. 

I now behold another scene. 

Where pleasure beams with heaven's own light. 
More pure, more constant, more serene. 
And not less bright. 

Faith, on whose breast the loves repose. 

Whose chain of flowers no force can sever; 
And modesty, who, when she goes. 
Is gone for ever. 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



105 



REPENTANCE OF KING RODERIGO. 

There is, I hear, a poor half-ruiueJ cell 
In Xeres, whither few indeed resort ; 
Green are the walls within, green is the floor 
And slippery from disuse ; for Christian feet 
Avoid it, as half-holy, half-accurst. 
Still in its dark recess fanatic sin 
Abases to the ground his tangled hair, 
And servile scourges and reluctant groans 
Roll o'er tlie vault uninterruptedly. 
Till, such the natural stiUness of the place, 
The very tear upon the damps below 
Drops audible, and the heart's throb replies. 
There is the idol maid of Christian creed, 
And taller images, whose history 
I know not, nor inquired — a scene of blood, 
Of resignation amid mortal pangs. 
And other things, exceeding all belief. 
Hither the aged Opas of Seville 
Walked slowly, and behind him was a man 
Barefooted, bruised, dejected, comfortless, 
In sackcloth ; the white ashes on his head 
Dropt as he smote his breast ; he gathered up, 
Replaced them all, groan'd deeply, looked to heaven, 
And held them, like a treasure, with claspt hands. 



MORNING. 

Now to Aurora borne by dappled steeds, 
The sai'red gate of orient |)earl and gold, 
Smitten with Lucifer's light silver wand. 
Expanded slow to strains of harmony ; 
The waves beneath in purpling rows, like doves 
Glancing with wanton coyness tow'rd their queen. 
Heaved softly ; thus the damsel's bosom heaves 
When from her sleeping lover's downy cheek, 
To wiiich so warily her own she brings 
Each moment nearer, she perceives the warmth 
Of coming kisses fann'd by playful dreams. 
Ocean and earth and heaven was jubilee. 
For 'twas the morning pointed out by fate 
When an immortal mild and mortal man 
Should share each other's nature knit in bliss. 



CLIFTON. 

Cr.ivTOV, in vain thy varied scenes invite — 
The mossy bank, dim glade, and dizzy height; 
The sheep, that, starting from the tufted thyme. 
Untune the distant churches' mellow chime ; 
As o'er each limb a gentle horror creeps. 
And shake al)ovc onr heads the craggy steeps. 
Pleasant I've thought it to pursue the rower 
While light and darkness seize the changeful oar ; 
The frolic Naiails drawing from below 
A net of silver round tlie black canoe. 
Now tiie last lonely solace must it be 
To watch pale evening brood o'er laml and sea. 
Then join my friends, and let tho^e friends believe 
My cheeks ai-e moistened by the dews of eve. 
14 



PASSAGE FROM IPPOLITO DI ESTE. 

Ippollio, He saw his error. 

Ferranie. All men do when age 
Bends down their heads, or gold sinries in their way. 

IppuUto. Although I would have helpt you in 
distress, 
And just removed you from the court awhile. 
Yon called me tyrant. 

Ferranie. Called thee tyrant 1 11 
By heaven ! in tyrant there is sometliing great 
That never was in thee. I would be killed 
Rather by any monster of the wild 
Than choked by weeds and quicksands rather 

crush'd 
By maddest rage than clay-co!d apathy. 
Those who act well the tyrant, neither seek 
Nor shun the name: and yet I wonder not 
That thou repeatest it, and wishest me ; 
It sounds like power, like policy, like courige. 
And none that calls thee tyrant can despis; thee. 
Go, issue orders for imprisonment. 
Warrants for death: the gibbet and the wheel, 
Lo ! the grand boundaries of tiiy dominion ! 
Oh what a mighty olRce for a minister ! 
(And such Alfonso's brother calls himself), 
To be the scribe of hawkers ! j\Ian of genius ! 
The lanes and allies echo with tiiy works. 



A CATHEDRAL SCENE. 

Now all the people follow the procession; 
Here may I walk alone, and let my spirits 
Enjoy the coolness of these quiet ailes. 
Surely no air is stirring; every step 
Tires me ; the columns shake, the ceiling fleets. 
The floor beneath me slopes, the altar rises. 
Stay! — here she stept — what grace! what harmony ! 
It seemed that every accent, eveiy note, 
Of all the choral music, breathed from her: 
From her celestial airiness of form 
I could have fancied purer liglit descended. 
Between the pillars, close and wearying, 
I watcht her as she went : I had rusht on — 
It was too late ; yet, when I stopt, I thought 
I stopt full soon : I ciicd. Is she not there ] 
She had been : I had seen her shadow burst 
The sunbeam as she parted : a strange sound, 
A sound that stupefied and not aroused me, 
Filled all my senses ; such was never felt 
Save when the sword-girt angel struck the gate, 
And Paradise wail'd loud, and closed for ever. 



EPITAPH ON A POET IN A WELSH 
CHURCHYARD. 

Ki vn souls ! who strive what pious hand shall bring 
The first-found crocus from rclu'-tant spring. 
Or blow your wintry fingers while they strew 
This sunless turf with rosemarj' and rue, 
Bend o'er your lovers first, but mind to save 
One sprig of each to trim a poet's grave. 



106 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



THE MAID'S LAMENT. 

I LOVED him not; and yet, now he is gone, 

I ftel I am alone. 
I check'd him while he spoke ; yet, could he speak, 

Alas I I would not check. 

For reasons not to love him once I sought, 

And weaned all my thought 
To vex myself and him : I now would give 

My love could he hut live 
Who lately lived for me, and, when he found 

'T was vain, in holy ground 
He hid his face amid the shades of death ! 

I waste for him my hreath 
Who wasted his for me ! hut mine returns, 

And this lorn bosom hums 
With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep. 

And waking me to weep 
Tears that had molted his soft heart : for years 

Wept he as bitter tears ! 

" Merciful God !" such was his latest prayer, 

'• These may she never share !" 
Quieter is his hreath, his breast more cold 

Than daisies in the mould. 
Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate. 

His name and life's brief date. 
Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe'er you be, 

And, oh ! pray, too, for me ! 



THE BRIER. 

Mr brier that smelledst svi'eet, 
When gentle spring's first heat, 
Ran through thy quiet veins ; 
Thou that couldst injure none. 
But wouldst he left alone, 
Alone thou leavestme, and naught of thine remains. 

What ! hath no poet's lyre 
O'er thee sweet breathing brier, 

Hung fondly, ill or well 1 
And yet, methinks with thee, 
A poet's sympathy, 
Whether in weal or wo, in life or death, might dwell. 

Hard usage both must hear. 
Few hands your youth will rear. 

Few bosoms cherish you; 
Your tender prime must bleed 
Ere you are sweet, but freed [too. 

From life, you then are prized ; thus prized are poets 



THE DRAGON-FLY. 

LiFK (priest and poet say) is but a dream ; 
I wish no happier one than to be laid 
Beneath some cool syringa's scented shade ; 

Or wavy willow, by the running stream, 
Brimful of moral, where the dragon-fly 
Wanders as careless and content as I. 

Thanks for this fancy, insect king, 

Of purple crest and meshy wing. 

Who, with indifference, givest up 

The water-lily's golden cup, 

To come again and overlook 

What I am writing in my book. 

Believe me, most who read the line 

Will read with hornier eyes than thine ; 

And yet their souls shall live for ever, 

And thine drop dead into the river! 

God pardon them, O insect king. 

Who lancy so unjust a thing ! 



AN ARAB TO HIS MISTRESS. 

Look thou yonder, look and tremble, 
Thou whose passion swells so high ; 

See those ruins ! that resenilde 
Flocks of camels as they lie. 

'Twas a fair but froward city. 
Bidding tribes and chiefs obey. 

Till he came, who, deaf to pity, 
Tost the imploring arm away. 

Spoil'd and prostrate, she lamented 
What her pride and folly wrought: 

But was ever Pride contented. 
Or would Folly e'er be taught 1 

Strong are cities ; Rage o'erthrows 'em ; 

Rage o'erswells the gallant ship ; 
Stains it not the cloud-white bosom, 

Flaws it not the ruby lip 1 

All that shields us, all that charms us. 
Brow of ivory, tower of stone. 

Yield to Wrath ; another's harms us. 
But we perish by our own. 

Night may send to rave and ravage 

Panther and hyena fell ; 
But their maimers, harsh and savage. 

Little suit the mild gazelle. 

When the waves of life surround thee. 
Quenching oft the light of love, 

When the clouds of doubt confound thee, 
Drive not from thy breast the do\e. 



JOHN LEYDEN. 



Dr. Leyden was born at Denholm, a village 
on the borders of Teviotdale, in Scotland, in 
the autumn of 1775. His father was a shep- 
herd farmer, whose humble cottage was the 
home of piety and content. Young Leyden 
entered the parish school of Kirktown when 
nine years of age, and continued his studies 
there for about three years, when he was re- 
moved to a private academy kept by a Came- 
ronian clergyman who prepared him for the 
university. At Edinburgh he was a member 
of literary societies with Lord Brougham, Dr. 
Thomas Brown, Lord Jeffrey, and the Rev. 
Sidney Smith. After completing his classi- 
cal course with distinguished reputation, he 
studied theology, and in 1795 was licensed to 
preach by the Presbytery of St. Andrews. He 
did not succeed very well in the pulpit, and 
soon abandoned it to enter upon a literary life. 
His first production was an ''Historical and 
Descriptive Account of Discoveries in Africa," 
published in 1798, and his second, an edition 
of ''The Complaynt of Scotland," an old and 
scarce tract, to which he added an elaborate 
preliminary essay and a glossary. In 1799 
he became acquainted with Scott, to whom 
he gave valuable aid in the preparation of 
"The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," 
which appeared in 1801. In 1802, having 
previously obtained the degree of Doctor of 
Medicine from the university of St. Andrews, 
he went to London with a view to embark 
for India, and while there prepared for the 
press his " Scenes of Infancy," a poem of 
considerable merit, in which he combines in- 
teresting allusions to local history and super- 
stition with graphic description of the scenery 
amid which he passed his early years. Of 
this poem it has been said by a judicious 
critic, that "in genuine feeling and fancy, as 
well as in harmony and elegance of composi- 
tion, it can encounter very few rivals in the 
English language. It touches so many of the 
genuine strings of the lyre, with the hand of 
inspiration ; it draws forth so many tender 
notes, and carries our eyes and our hearts so 
utterly among those scenes with which the 
real bard is conversant, that we for a moment 



enjoy some portion of the creative powers of 
the poet himself. Nowhere laboured, studied, 
or affected, he writes in a stream of natural 
eloquence, which shows the entire predomi- 
nance of his emotion over his art." 

Dr. Leyden soiled for Madras in the spring 
of 1803, and immediately after his arrival 
entered the service of the East India Com- 
pany, in which he continued the larger portion 
of the time until his death. He devoted the 
intervals of business, whon health permitted, 
to the laborious study of the literature and 
languages of the eastern nations. He made 
elegant translations from the Persian, Arabic, 
and Sanscrit, wrote several valuable philologi- 
cal tracts, and grammars of the IMalay, Pracrit 
and other languages. 

In 1810 he resigned the office of Com- 
missioner of Requests, and wa.s preferred to 
that of Assayer of the Mint at Calcutta, with 
less arduous duties and a more liberal salary. 
In 1811 his services were required in the ex- 
pedition against Java, and he sailed from Cal- 
cutta under Lord Minto on the ninth of March 
in that year. After Batavia fell into the pos- 
session of the Company's forces, he employed 
his leisure in researches into the literature of 
the conquered city. He one day entered a 
large low room in one of the public buildincrs 
which was said to contain some Javanese 
curiosities, and the confined air of which was 
impregnated with the poisonous quality which 
has made Batavia the grave of so many Eu- 
ropeans. On leaving it he was suddenly 
affected with the first symptoms of a mortal 
fever, of which he died on the twenty-eighth 
of August, in the thirty-sixth j^ear of his ao-e. 

Leyden is said to have been pedantic and 
vain; but he had many admirable social 
qualities, and those who were most intimately 
acquainted with his character M'ere his warm- 
est friends. Sir Walter Scott alludes to 
him in the following lines from the "Lord of 
the Isles," written soon after his death : — 

His bright and lirief career is o'er, 

And nmtc liis Iiimful strains ; 
Qnencli'd is liis lamp of varied lore, 
Thai loved the light of song lo pour; — 
A distant and a deadly shore 

Has Levden's cold remains ! 

( 107 



108 



JOHN LEY DEN. 



ODE TO JEHOVAH. 

I\ high Jkhovah's praise, my strain 
Of triumph shall the chorus lead, 

Who pluiigeJ beneath the rolling main 
'I'he horseman with his vaunted steed. 
Dread breaker of our servile ehaiiis, 
By Whom our arm in strength remains, 

The scented algum forms Tht car! 

Our father's Gou ! Thy name we raise 
Beyond the bounds of mortal praise, 

The Chieftain and the Lord of war. 

Far in the caverns of the deep 

Their chariots sunk to rise no more ; 

An<l Pharaoii's mighty warriors sleep 

Where th? Red Sea's huge monsters roar. 
Plumbed like a rock amid the wave, 
Around thoir heads the billows lave; 

Down, down the yawning gulf they go, 
Dash'ti" by T;iy high-expanded hand 
To pieces on the pointed sand, 

That strews the shelving rocks below. 

What lambent lightnings round Thee gleam, 
'I'ar foes in iilackening heaps to strew ! 

As o'er wide fields of stubble stream 
The fianies, in undulations blue. 
And lo ! the waters of the deep 
Swell in one enormous heap, 

Coll.'cted at Tut nostrils' breath. 
The bosom of the abyss revcal'd, 
Wali'd with huge crystal waves congeal'd. 

Unfolds the yawning jaws of death. 

"Swift, steeds of Egvpt, speed your course, 
And swift, ye rapid chariots, roll ! 

Not ocean's bed impedes our force; 

Red vengeance soon shall glut our soul: 
The sabre keen shall soon embrue 
Its glimmering edge in gory dew" — 

Lnpatient cried the exulting foe; — 
When, like a ponderous mass of lead. 
They sink — and sudden, o'er their head 

The bursting waves impetuous flow. 

But Triou, in whose sublime abode 
Resistless might and mercy dw»ll, 

Our voices, high o'er every God, 

With grateful hearts Thy praises swell ! 
Outstretch'd we saw 'J'hy red right hand, 
The earth her solid jaws expand; 

Adown the gulf alive they sink: — 

Whil^ we, within the incumbent main, 
Beheld the tumbling floods in vain 

Storm on our narrow pathway's brink. 

But, far as fame's shrill notes resound. 
With dire dis?nay the nations hear ; 

Old E lom's sons with laurels crown'd. 
And Moab's warriors melt with fear. 
The petrifying tale disarms 
The might of Canaan's countless swarms, 

Appall'd their heroes sink supine; 
No mail'd band with thrilling cries 
The might of Jacob's sons defies, 

That moves to conquer Palestine. 



Nor burning sands our way impede. 
Where nature's glowing embers lie; 

But, led by Thf.k, we safely tread 
Beneath the furnace of the sky. 
To fields, where i'l rtile olives twine 
Their branches with the clustering vine 

Soon shalt Thoc Jacob's armies bring ; 
'I'o }>lant them by Thy mighty hand 
Where the proud towers of Salem stand; 

And ever reign their God and King. 

Far in the deep's unfathom'd caves 

Jvie strew'd the flower of Mazur's land, 

Save when the surge, that idly raves, 
Heaves their cold corses on the sand. 
With courage unappall'd, in vain 
They rush'd within the channell'd main; 

Their heads the billows folded o'er: 
While Thou hast Israel's legions led 
Through the green ocean's coral bed, 

To ancient Edom's pa^my shore. 



ODE TO AN INDIAN GOLD COIN. 

WRIITEN IN CHERICAL, MALABAR. 

Slave of tlu^ dark and dirty mine ! 

What vanity has brought thee* here 1 
How can \ love to see thee shine 

So bright, whom I have bought so dear? — • 

The tent-ropes flapping lone I hear 
For twilight converse, arm in arm; 

'I'he jackal's shriek bursts on mine ear 
When mirth and music wont to charm. 

By Churic'd's dark wtindering streams. 
Where cane-tufts shadow a}l the wild. 

Sweet visions haunt my waking dreams 
Of Teviot loved while still a child, 
Of castled rocks stupendous piled 

By Esk or Eden's cia.ssic wave, 

Where loves of youth and friendship smiled, 

Uncursed by thee, vile yellow slave ! 

Fade, day-dreams sweet, from memory fade ! — 

The perish'd bliss of youth's first prime. 
That once so bright on fancy play'd. 

Revives no more in after time. 

Far from my sacred natal clime, 
I haste to an untimely grave; 

The daring thoughts that soar'd sublime 
Are suidc in ocean's southern wave. 

Slave of the mine ! thy yellow light 

Gleams baleful as the tomb-tue drear.— 
A gentle vision comes by night 

My lonely widow'd heart to cheer; 

Her eyes are dim viith many a tear. 
That once were guidin'j; stars to mine: 

Her fond heart throlis with many a fear ! — 
I cannot bear to see thee shine. 

For thee, for thee, vile yellow slave, 

I left a heart that loved me true ! 
I cross'd the tedious ocean-wave. 

To roam in climes unkind and newr. 



JOHN LEYDEN. 



109 



The cold wind of the stranger blew 
Chill on iny withcr'd heart : — the grave 

Dark and untiniely met my view — 
And all for thee, vile yellow slave ! 

Ha ! comest thou now so late to mock 

A wanderer's banisli'd heart forlorn. 
Now that his frame the lightning shock 

Of sun-rays tipt with death has borne ? 

From love, iVom friendship, country, torn, 
To memory's fond regrets the prey. 

Vile slave, thy yellow dross I scorn ! 
Go mix thee with thy kindred clay ! 



PORTUGUESE HYMN TO THE VIRGIN. 

WRITTEN AT SEA. 

Star of the wide and patldess sea, 
Who lovest on mariners to shine. 

These votive garments wet, to thee, 

■ We hang within thy holy shrine. 
When o'er us flash'd the surging brine. 

Amid tlie waving waters toss'd. 

We call'd no other name but thine, 

And hoped when other hope was lost. 

Ave Maris Stella ! 

Star of the vast and howling main ! 

When dark and lone is all the sky, 
And mountain waves o'er ocean's plain 

Erect their stormy he.ads on high, 

When virgins for their true loves sigh 
They raise their weeping eyes to thee ; — 

The star of ocean heeds their cry, 
And saves the foundering bark at sea. 

Ave Maris Stella ! 

Star of the dark and stormv sea ' 

When wrecking tempests round us rave. 

Thy gentle virgin form we see 

Bright rising o'er the hoary wave. 

The howling storms that seemed to crave 

Their victims, sink in music sweet; 
The surging seas recede to pave 

The path beneath thy glistening feet. 

Ave Maris Stella! 

Star of the desert waters wild, 

Who pitying hear'st the seaman's cry ! 
The God of mercy as a child 

On that chaste bosom loves to lie ; 

While soft the chorus of the sky 
Their hymns of tender mercy sing, 

And angel voices name on high 
The mother of the heavenly king. 

Ave Maris Stella! 

Star of the deep ! at that blest name 

The waves sleep silent round the keel. 
The tempests wild their fury tame. 

That made the deep's foundations reel ; 

The soft celestial accents steal 
So sorithitig through the realms of woe, 

The newly damn'd a respite feel 
From torture iu the depths below. 

Ave Maris Stella! 



Star of the mild and placid seas ! 

Whom rainbow rays of mercy crown, 
Whose name thy faithful Portuguese, 

O'er all that to (he de|)ths go down. 

With hymns of grateful transport own, 
When clouds obscure all other light, 

And heaven assumes an awful frown, 
The star of ocean glitters bright. 

Ave Maris Stella ! 

Star of the deep! when angel lyres 

To hymn thy holy name essay, 
In vain a mortal harp aspires 

To mingle in the mighty lay ; 

Mother of God ! one living ray 
Of hope our grateful bosoms fires — 

\^^len storms and tempests pass away, 
To join the bright innnortal choirs. 

Ave Maris Stella ! 



THE MEMORY OF THE PAST. 

Alas, that fancy's pencil still portrays 
A fairer scene than ever nature drew ! 
Alas, that ne'er to reason's placid view 

Arise the charms of youth's delusive days ! 
For still the memory of our tender years, 

By contrast vain, impairs our present joys ; 

Of greener fields we dream and purer skies. 
And softer tints than ever nature wears. — 
Lo ! now, to fancy, Teviot's vale appears 

Adorn'd with flowers of more enchan'ing hue 

And fairer bloom than ever Eden knew. 
With all the charms that infancy endears. 

Dearscenes! whichgrateful memory still employ, 

Why should you strive to blast the present joy 1 



A MORNING SCENE. 

Lo ! in the vale-!, where wandering rivulets run. 
The fleecy mists shine gilded in the sun. 
Spread their loose folds, till now the lagging gale. 
Unfurls no more its lightly skimming sail; 
But through the hoary flakes, that fall like snow, 
Gleams in ethereal hue the watery bow. 
'Tis ancient silence, robed in thistle down, 
Whose snowy locks its fairy circles crown ; 
His vesture moves not, as he hovers lone. 
While curling fogs compose his airy throne; 
Serenely still, self-pois'd, he rests on high, 
And soothes each infint breeze that fans the sky. 
The mists ascend ; — the mountains scarce are free. 
Like islands floating in a billowy sea ; 
While on their chalky summits glimmering dance 
The sun's last rays across the gray expanse: 
As sink the hills in waves that round them grow, 
The hoary surges scale the cliff's tall brow ; 
The fleecy billows o'er its he. id are hurl'd. 
As ocean ouce embraced the prostrate world. 



no 



JOHN LEYDEN. 



CHANGES OF HOxME. 

As every prospect opens on my view, 
I seem'd to live departed years anew ; 
When in these wilds a jocund, sportive child, 
Each flower self-sown my heedless hours beguiled; 
The wabret leaf, that by the pathway grew, 
The wild-briar rose, of pale and blushful hue. 
The thistle's rolling wheel, of silken down. 
The blue-bell, or the daisy's pearly crown. 
The gaudy butterfly, in wanton round, 
That, like a living pea-flower, skimm'd the ground ! 

Again I view each rude romantic glade. 
Where once with tiny steps my childhood stray'd 
To watch the foam-bell of the bubbling brook, 
Or mark the motions of the clamorous rook. 
Who saw her nest, close thatch'd with ceaseless toil, 
At summer eve become the woodman's spoil ! 

Green down ascending drink the moorish rills, 
And yellow corn-fields crown the heathless hills. 
Where to the breeze the shrill brown linnet sings, 
And prunes with frequent bill his russet wings. 
High and more high the shepherds drive their flocks, 
And climb with timid step the hoary rocks ; 
From cliff" to cliff the ruffling breezes sigh. 
Where idly on the sun-beat steeps they lie. 
And wonder, that the vale no more displays 
The pastoral scenes that pleased their early days. 

No more the cottage roof, fern-thatch'd and gray, 
Invites the weary traveller from the way. 
To rest, and taste the peasant's simple cheer. 
Repaid by news and tales he loved to hear ; 
The clay-built wall, with woodbine twisted o'er. 
The house-leek clustering green above the door, 
While through the sheltering elms, that round 

them grew, 
The winding smoke arose in columns blue ; — 
These all have fled; and from their hamlets brown 
The swains have gone, to sicken in the town, 
To pine in crowded streets, or ply the loom ; 
For splendid halls deny the cottage room. 
Yet on the neighbouring heights they oft convene. 
With fond regret to view each former scene. 
The level meads, where infants wont to play 
Around their mothers, as they piled the hay, 
The hawthorn hedge-row, and the hanging wood. 
Beneath whose boughs their humble cottage stood. 

Gone are the peasants from the humble shed. 
And with them too the humble virtues fled. 
No more the farmer, on these fertile plains, 
Is held the father of the meaner swains. 
Partakes, as he directs, the reaper's toil, 
Or with his shining share divides the soil, 
Or in his hall, when winter nights are long. 
Joins in the burden of the damsel's song, 
Repeats the tales of old heroic times. 
While Bruce and Wallace consecrate the rhymes. 
These all are flod — and, in the farmer's place, 
Of prouder look, advance a dubious race, 
That ape the pride of rank with awkward state 
The vice, but not the polish of the great. 
Flaunt, like the poppy mid the ripening grain, 
A nauseous weed, that poisons all the plain. 
The peasant, once a friend a friend no more, 
Cringes, a slave, before the master's door: 



Or else, too proud where once he loved to fawn, 
For distant dimes deserts his native lawn. 
And fondly hopes beyond the western main 
To find the virtues here beloved in vain. 



TEVIOTDALE. 

Laxd of my fathers ! — though no mangrove here 
O'er thy blue streams her flexile branches rear, 
Nor scaly palm her finger'd scions shoot, 
Nor luscious guava wave her yellow fruit. 
Nor golden apples glimmer from the tree — 
Land of dark heaths and mountains ! thou art free. 

Untainted yet, thy stream, fair Teviot ! runs, 
With unatoned blood of Gambia's sons: 
No drooping slave, with spirit bow'd to toil. 
Grows, like the weed, self-rooted to the soil, 
Nor cringing vassal on these pansied meads 
Is bought and harter'd, as the flock he feeds. 
Free, as the lark, that carols o'er his head. 
At dawn the healthy ploughman leaves his bed, 
Binds to the yoke his sturdy steers with care. 
And whistling loud directs the mining share ; 
Free, as his lord, the peasant treads the plain, 
And heaps his harvest on the groaning wain ; 
Proud of his laws, tenacious of his right. 
And vain of Scotia's old unconquer'd might. 

Dear native valleys ! may ye long retain 
The charter'd freedom of the mountain swain! 
Ijong mid your sounding glades in union sweet 
May rural innocence and beauty meet ! 
And still be duly heard at twilight calm 
From every cot the peasant's chanted psalm ! 
Then, Jedworth ! though thy ancient choirs shall 

fade. 
And time lay bare each lofty colonnade, 
From the damp roof the massy sculptures die. 
And in their vaults thy rifted arches lie. 
Still in these vales shall angel harps prolong 
By Jed's pure stream a sweeter even song, 
Than long processions once, with mystic zeal, 
Pour'd to the harp and solemn organ's peal. 



SERENITY OF CHILDHOOD. 

In the sweet morn of life, when health and joy 
Laugh in the eye, and o'er each sunny plain 
A mild celestial softness seems to reign. 

Ah ! who could dream what woes the heart annoy ? 

No saddening sighs disturb the vernal gale 
Which fans the wild-wood music on the ear; 
Unbathed the sparkling eye with pity's tear. 

Save listening to the aged soldier's tale, 

The heart's slow grief, which wastes the child of wo. 
And lovely injured woman's cruel wrong, 
We hear not in the sky-lark's morning song. 

We hear not in the gales that o'er us blow, 
Visions devoid of wo which childhood drew, 
How oft shall my sad heart your soothing scenes 
renew ! 



CHARLES LAMB. 



The author of " EUa" was the son of Johx 
Lamb, a scrivener, and was born in the Inner 
Temple, London, on the eighteenth of Febru- 
ary, 1775. In 178'2 he was admitted to the 
school of Christ's Hospital, where he remained 
«until he had entered into his fifteenth year, 
from which time he was employed in the 
South-Sea House, under his elder brother, 
until 1192, when he obtained an appointment 
in the office of the accountant-general of the 
Eist Lidia Company. He was in the India- 
house thirty-five years, rarely absent from his 
post a single day, and fulfilling his duties 
with most exact fidelity. He lived meantime 
with his " gentle sister Mary'' — neither of 
them being ever married — and had at all 
times a circle of ardent friends, embracing 
some of ihe most eminent persons of the coun- 
try, as Coi,ERiDSE, who was his schoolfellow, 
Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Southey, and Ser- 
geant Talfourd, his biographer. He con- 
tinued nearly all his life in London, regarding 
it, with a sort of Chinese exclusiveness, as 
the only scene in which existence could be 
enjoyed, until within two or three years of his 
death, when he wrote to a friend that the 
town, with all his native hankering after it, 
was not what it had been in his earlier life. 
"The streets, the shops," he says, "are left, 
but all old friends are gone : I was frighiful!}'^ 
convinced of this as I passed houses and 
places, emptj' caskets now. I have ceased to 
care almost about anybody ; the bodies I 
cared for are in graves, or dispersed ; my old 
chums that lived so long and flourished so 
steadily, are crumbled away." 

Lamb's favourite reading was chiefly in 
the early English authors, and some of its 
results appeared in his " Selections from 
Dramatists contemporary with Shakspeare," 
and in his essays on Shakspeare's Tragedies, 
on the works of George Wither, &c. His 
first appearance as an author, however, was 
at the age of twenty-two, when he pub- 
lished in connection with Coleridge and 
Charles Li-oyd, a volume of verses, not par- 
ticularly deserving of admiration, and in the 



next year, " Rosamund Gray," a story after 
the manner of Mackenzie, which was more 
popular. In 1807 appeared "John Woodvil, 
a Tragedy;" in 1803 "The Adventures of 
Ulysses," and at intervals came out his " Es- 
says of Elia," the most remarkable of his 
compositions, which established his reputation 
on good and lasting grounds. 

Besides the works already mentioned. Lamb 

wrote a farce entitled " Mr. H ," which 

was acted at Drury Lane. Though Elliston 
personated the hero, it was for some reason 
unsuccessful. In America, however, it after- 
ward had a great run, and was performed by 
Mr. Wood, in Philadelphia, as many nights, 
perhaps, as any piece of its nature ever brought 
out by that excellent comedian. 

Lamb's poems, excepting the tragedy which 
we have named, are few and brief, and of 
less merit than his prose writings. "John 
Woodvil," however, contains passages which 
would not have done dishonour to the great 
dramatists of Shakspeare's golden age ; and 
" The Farewell to Tobacco," in these pages, 
is such a piece of verse as one might imagine 
" Elia" would write. His letters and his 
essays belong to that small and slowly in- 
creasing body of works constituting the 
standard literature of the English language. 
Tlieir borilwmie, exquisite humour, and ten- 
derness, will make them as great favourites 
with successive generations of readers, as the 
living Charles Lamb was with his personal 
friends. 

Speaking of the "Farewell to Tobacco," 
reminds us of the most melancholy subject in 
Lamb's history — his intemperance. So far 
as we know, it was his only frailty, and it 
was one which he shared with Coleridge, 
the most intimate, as well as the greatest of 
his friends. Such infirmities of genius warn 
us of tiie necessity of preserving every guard 
to virtue, and teach the duty of charity and 
forbearance. 

Mr. Lamb died suddenly at Edmonton, on 
the 27th of December, 1831, in the sixtieth 
year of his age. 

Ill 



112 



CHARLES LAMB. 



FAREWELL TO TOBACCO. 

Mat the Babylonish curse 

Strait confound my stammering verse, 

If I can a passage see 

In this word-perplexity, 

Or a fit expression find, 

Or a language to my mind, 

(Still the phrase is wide or scant) 

To take leave of thee, great plant ! 

Or in any terms relate 

Half my love, or half my hate : 

For I hate, yet love, thee so. 

That, whichever thing I show. 

The plain truth will seem to be 

A constrain'd hyperbole, 

And the passion to proceed 

More for a mistress than a weed. 

Sooty retainer to the vine, 
Bacchus' black servant, negro fine; 
Sorcerer, that makest us dote upon 
Thy begrimod complexion, 
And, for thy pernicious sake, 
More and greater oaths to break 
Than reclaimed lovers take 
'Gainst women : thou thy siege dost lay 
Much too in the female way. 
While thou suck'st the labouring breath 
Faster than kisses or than death. 

Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, 
That our worst foes cannot find us, 
And ill fortune, that would thwart us, 
Shoots at rovers, shooting at us; 
While each man. thro' thy heightening steam, 
Does like a smoking Etna seem, 
And all about us does express 
(Fancy and wit in richest dress) 
A Sicilian fruitfuhiess. 

Thou throua;h such a mist dost show us, 
That our best friends do not know us, 
And, for those allowed features, 
Due to reasonable creatures, 
Liken'st us to fell chimeras. 
Monsters that, who see us, fear us ; 
Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, 
Or, who first loved a cloud, Ixion. 

Bacchus we know, and we allow 
His tipsy rites. But what art thou, 
That but by reflex can'st show 
What his deity can do. 
As tlie false Egvptian spell 
Aped the true Hebrew miracle 1 
Some few vapours thou may'st raise, 
The weak brain may serve to amaze, 
But to the reins and noliler heart 
Can'st nor life nor heat impart. 

Brother of Bacchus, later born, 
The old world was sure forlorn. 
Wanting thee, that aidost more 
The god's victories than before 
All his panthers, and the brawls 
Of his y)iping Bacchanals. 
These, as stale, we disallovsr, 
Or judge of thee meant: only thou 



His true Indian conquest art ; 
And, for ivy round his dart. 
The reforme'd god now weaves 
A finer thyrsus of thy leaves. 

Scent to match thy rich perfume 
Chemic art did ne'er presume 
Through her quaint alembic strain, 
None so sovereign to the brain. 
Nature, that did in thee excel. 
Framed again no second smell. 
Roses, violets, but toys 
For the smaller sort of boys, 
Or for greener damsels meant ; 
Thou art the only manly scent. 

Stinking'st of the slinking kind, 
Filth of the moutli and fog of the mind, 
Africa, that brags her foyson. 
Breeds no such prodigious poison. 
Henbane, nightshade, both together. 

Hemlock, aconite 

Nay, rather 
Plant divine, of rarest virtue ; 
Blisters on the tongue would hurt you. 
'T was but in a sort I blamed thee ; 
None e'er prosper'd who defamed thee ; 
Irony all, and feign'd abuse, 
Such as perplext lovers use. 
At a need, when, in despair 
To paint forth their fairest fair. 
Or in part but to express 
That exceeding comeliness 
Which their fancies doth so strike, 
They borrow language of dislike ; 
And, instead of dearest miss, 
Jev\'el, honey, sweetheart, bliss. 
And those forms of old admiring, 
Call her Cockatrice and Siren, 
Basilisk, and all that's evil, 
Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, 
Elhiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, 
Monkey, Ape, and twenty more ; 
Friendly Trait' ress, loving Foe, — 
Not that she is truly so, 
But no other way they know 
A contentment to express, 
Borders so upon excess. 
That they do not rightly wot 
Whether it be pain or not. 

Or, as men, constrain'd to part 
With what's nearest to their heart, 
While their sorrow 's at the height, 
Lose discrimination quite. 
And their hasty wrath let fall, 
To appease their frantic gall. 
On the darling thing whatever. 
Whence they feel it death to sever, 
Tho\igh it be, as they, perforce. 
Guiltless of the sad divorce. 

For I must (nor let it grieve thee. 
Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee. 
For thy sake, Tobacco, I 
Would do any thing but die, 
And but seek to extend my days 
Long enough to sing thy praise. 



CHARLES LAMB. 



113 



But, as she, who once hath been 
A king's consort, is a queen 
Ever after, nor will bate 
Any tittle of her state, 
Though a widow, or divorced. 
So I, from thy converse forced, 
The old name and style retain, 
A right KaUierinc of Spain ; 
And a seat, too, 'mongst the joys 
Of the blest Tobacco Boys ; 
Where though I, by sour physician, 
Am debarr'd the full fruition 
Of thy favours, I may catch 
Some collateral sweets, and snatch 
Sidelong odours, that give life 
Like glances from a neighbour's wife ; 
And still live in the by-places 
And the suburbs of thy graces ; - 
And in thy borders take delight, 
An unconquer'd Canaanite. 



HESTER. 

Whkx maidens such as Hester die. 
Their place ye may not well supply, 
Though ye among a thousand try. 
With vain endeavour. 

A month or more hath she been dead, 
Yet cannot I by force be led 
To think upon the wormy bed. 
And her together. 

A springy motion in her gait, 
A rising step, did indicate 
Of pride and joy no common rate. 
That flush'd her spirit. 

I know not by what name beside 
I shall it call : — if 'twas not pride, 
It was a joy to that allied, 
She did inherit. 

Her parents held the Quaker rule, 
Which doth the human feeling cool. 
But she was train'd in nature's school, 
Nature had blest her. 

A waking eye, a prying mind, 
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind, 
A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind, 
Ye could not Hester. 

My sprightly neighbour, gone before 
I'o that unknown and silent shore. 
Shall we not meet, as heretofore. 

Some summer morning. 

When from thy cheerful eyes a ray 
Hath struck a bliss upon the day, 
A bliss that would not go away, 

A sweet fore-warning 1 
15 



THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES. 

I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions. 
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days, 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 

I have been laughing, I have been carousing. 
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies. 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 

I loved a love once, fairest among women ! 
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her — 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man ; 
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly ; 
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. 

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my child- 
hood. 
Earth seein'd a desert I was bound to traverse, 
Seeking to tind the old familiar faces. 

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother. 
Why vvert not thou born in mv father's dwelling! 
So might we talk of the old familiar faces — 

How some they have died, and some they have left 

me. 
And some are taken from me; all are departed ; 
All, all arc gone, the old familiar faces. 



THE FAMILY NAME. 

What reason first imposed thee, gentle name. 
Name that my father bore, and his sire's sire. 
Without reproach? we trace our -stream no higher; 

And I, a childless man, may end the same. 

Perchance some shepherd on Lincolnian plains, 

In manners guileless as his own sweet flocks, 

Received thee first amid the merry mocks 
And arch-allusions of his fellow swains. 

Perchance from Salem's holier fields return'd, 
With glory gotten on the heads abhorr'd 
Of faithless Saracens, some martial lord 

Took his meek title, in whose zeal he burn'd. 
Whate'er the fount whence thy beginnings came, 
No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name. 



SONNET. 

We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, 
The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween. 
And Innocence her name. The time has been, 
We two did love each other's company ; 

Time was, we two had wept to have been apart. 
But when by show of seeming good beguiled, 
I left the garb and manners of a child. 
And my first love for man's society. 

Defiling with the world my virgin heart — 
My loved companion dropp'd a tear and fled, 
And hid in deepest shades her awful head. 

Beloved, who shall tell me where thou art — 
In what delicious Eden to be found — 
That I may seek thee the wide world around ? 
k2 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 



Thomas Campbell was born on the twenty- 
seventh of September, 1777, in Glasg-ow, 
where his father was a retired merchant. 
When twelve years old he entered the uni- 
versity of his native city, and in the following 
year gained a j)rize for a translation from 
Aristophanes, after a hard contest, over a 
competitor of nearly twice his age. He was 
here seven years, in all which time he had 
scarcely a rival in classical learning; and the 
Greek professor, when bestowing on him a 
medal for one of his versions, announced that 
it was the best ever produced in the university. 
He made equal proficiency in other branches of 
education, and, on completing his academical 
course, studied medicine and law. 

He quitted Glasgow to remove into Argyle- 
shire, whence he went to Edinburgh, where 
he was for several years a private tutor. At 
the errly age of twenty-one he finished The 
Pleasures of Hope, which placed him in the 
front rank of contemporary poets. In the 
spring of 1800, he left Scotland for the Conti- 
nent. While at Hamburgh he wrote the 
p]xile of Erin, from an impression made upon 
his mind by the condition of some Irish exiles 
in the vicinity of that city ; and, with the 
Danish war in prospect, his famous naval 
lyric, Ye Mariners of England. He travelled 
over the most interesting portions of Ger- 
many and Prussia, visited their universities, 
and formed friendships with the Schlegels, 
Klopstock, and other scholars and men of 
genius. From the walls of a convent he saw 
the charge of Klenau upon the French at 
Hohenlinden, which he has so vividly de- 
scribed in his celebrated odfe upon that battle. 
Soon after his return to Scotland, in 1801, he 
received a token of the royal admiration of 
his Pleasures of Hope, in a pension of two 
hundred pounds; and, after a short residence 
at Edinburgh, married Miss Matilda Sin- 
cLAiii, and settled at Sydenham, near London, 
where he remained many years, and wrote 
Gertrude of Wyoming, Lord Ullin's Daugh- 
ter, and several of his minor poems. In 1820 
he became editor of the New Monthly Maga- 
zine, which he conducted with a spirit and 



ability worthy of his reputation, tor ten years, 
at the end of which time the death of his wife 
induced its abandonment. In this period he 
took an active interest in the causes of Greece 
and Poland ; was three times elected Lord 
Hector of the University of Glasgow ; dis- 
charged the duties of Professor of Poetry in 
the Royal Institution ; and laid the foundation 
of the London University. 

For several years before his death, Mr. 
Campbell produced nothing of much excel- 
lence. Tlie Pilgrim of Glencoe and other Po- 
ems, which appeared in 1842, owed all their 
little reputation to his name. He died at 
Boulougne, on the fifteenth of June, 1844, and 
his remains were interred in the Poet's Corner 
of Westminster Abbey on the third of the fol- 
lowing month. 

Campbell's poetry has little need of criti- 
cal illustration. His chief merit is rhetorical. 
There is no vagueness or mysticism in his 
verse. The scenes and feelings he delineates 
are common to human beings in general, and 
the impressive style with which these are 
unfolded, owes its charm to vigour of lan- 
guage and forcible clearness of epithet. Many 
of his lines ring with a harmonious energy, 
and seem the oflTspring of the noblest enthusi- 
asm. This is especially true of his martial 
lyrics, which in their way are unsurpassed. 
The Pleasures of Hope, his earliest work, is 
one of the few standard heroic poems in our 
language. Poetic taste has undergone many 
remarkable changes since it appeared, but its 
ardent numbers are constantly resorted to by 
those who love the fire of the muse as well as 
her more delicate tracery. Though more 
<renerally read, it is by no means equal to 
Gertrude of Wyoming, a Pennsylvania Tale, 
written in the full maturity of his powers, and 
characterized by remarkable taste, feeling and 
tenderness. Nearly all Campbell's earlier 
v.'ritings are popular, and although a more 
transcendental school of poetry is at present 
in vogue, admirers of felicity of expression 
can never fail to recognise the stamp of true 
genius in one who has sung in such thrilling 
numbers of patriotism and affection. 

114 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 



115 



Besides his poems, Mr. Campbell wrote 
A History of Great Britain from the Accession 
of George IIL to the Peace of Amiens ; Lec- 
tures on Greek Poetr)- ; Letters from the 
South during a Journey to Algiers ; Lives of 
Petrarch, Shakspeare, and Mrs. Siddons ; seve- 
ral articles on poetr}^ and belles lettres, in the 
Edinburgh P]ncyclopedia, and other prose wri- 
tings, none of which deserved much considera- 
tion. His name appears also on the title-pages 



LOCHIEL'S WARNING. 

Wzard. LiciiielI Lochiel ! beware of the day 
When the Lowland^ shall meet thee in battle array ! 
For a field of the dead rushes red on my sijjht, 
And the clans of Cullodeii are scatter'd in fight. 
They rally, they bleed for their country and crown ; 
Wo, wo to the riders that tramph' them down ! 
PioaJ Cuaiberland prances, insulting the slain, 
And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain. 
But hark ! through the fast-flishinj lightuingofwar, 
W'hat steed to the desert flies frantic and far? 
'Tis thine, O Glenullin ! whose bride shall await, 
liike a love-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate. 
A steed com?s at morning : no rider is there, 
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair. 
Weep, Alhinl to death and captivity led ! 
Oh weep ! hut thy tears cannot number the dead : 
For a merciless sword o'er Culloden shall wave, 
CuUoileri ! that recks with the blood of the brave. 
Lochiel. Gn, preach to the coward, thou death- 
telling seer ! 
j Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear, 
Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering s^ght, 
This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright. 
Wizard. Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision 
to scorn 1 
Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn! 
Say rush the bold eagle exiiltingly forth 
Fromhishomeinthedarkrolling clouds of the north? 
Lo ! the deathshot of foemen outspeeding, he rode 
Coinpanionless, bearing destruction abroad ; 
Bat down let him stoop from his havoc on high ! 
Ah ! home let him speed, for the spoiler is nigh. 
Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast 
Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast ? 
'Tis the fire-shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven 
From his eyrie, that beacons the darkness of heaven. 
Oh, crested Lochiel! the peerless in might. 
Whose banners arise on the battlements' height. 
Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn ; 
Return to thy dwelling ! all lonely, return ! 
For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood. 
And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood. 
Lochiel. F'alse wizard, avaunt! I have marshali'd 
my clan, 
Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one ! 
They are true to the last of their blood and their 

breath. 
And, like reapers, descend to the harvest of death. 



of a Life of Frederick the Great of Prussia, 
but I believe he had little to do with the work. 
His Specimens of the British Poets, with Bio- 
graphical and Critical Notices, and an Essay 
on English Poetry, was published in seven vol- 
umes in 1819, and has recently been reproduced 
by Mr. Murray. It is a work of great value, 
containing much admirable criticism, and a 
judicious account of the poetry in the English 
langfuaffe down to the time of Cowper. 



Then welcome be Cumberland's steed to the shock! 
Let him dasli his proud foam like a wave on the rock! 
But wo to his kindred, and wo to his cause, 
When Albin her claymore indignantly draws ; 
When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd, 
Clanranald the dauntless, and Morav the proud, 
All plaided and plumed in their tartan array — 

Wizard. Lochiel! Lochiel! beware of the day ! 
For, dark and despairing, my sight [ may seal. 
But man cannot cover what God would reveal; 
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore. 
And coming events cast their shadows before. 
1 tell thee, Culbideu's dread echoes shall ring 
With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive 

king. 
Lo ! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath, 
Behold where he flies on bis desolate path ! 
Now in darkness and billows he sweeps from my 

sight : 
Rise, rise ! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight! 
'Tis finish'd. Their thunders are hush'd on the 

moors; 
Culloden is lost, and my country deplores. 
But where is the iron-bound prisoner ? Where? 
For the red eye of battle is shut in despair. 
Say, mounts he the ocean-wave, banish'd, forlorn. 
Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn? 
Ah, no ! fnr a darker departure is near; 
The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier ; 
His death-bell is tolling — oh ! Mercy, dispel 
Yon sight, that it freezes my spifit to tell ! 
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs, 
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims; 
Accursed be the fagots that blaze at his feet, 
Where his heart shall be thrown, ere it ceases to 

beat, 
With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale — 
Lochiel. Down, soothless insulter ! I trust not 

the tale : 
For never shall Albin a destiny meet 
So black with dishonour, so foul with retreat. 
Though my perishing ranks should be strew'd in 

their gore, 
Like ocean- weeds heap'd on the surf-beaten shore, 
Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains, 
White the kindling of life in his bosom remains, 
Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low. 
With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe; 
And, leaving in battle no blot on bis name, 
Look proudly to heaven from the deathbed of Fame. 



116 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 



7 HE LAST MAN. 

All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom, 

The sun hiin:jelf must die, 
Before this mortal shall assume 

Its immortality ! 
I saw a vision in my sleep. 
That gave my spirit strength to sweep 

Adown the gulf of Time : 
I saw the last of human mould, 
That shall creation's death behold, 

As Adam saw her prime. 

The sun's eye had a sickly glare ; 

The earth with age was wan ; 
The skeletons of nations were 

Around that lonely man. 
Some had expired in fight, — the brands 
Still rusted in their bony hands ; 

In plague and fiimine some. 
Earth's cities had no sound nor tread. 
And ships were drifting with the dead 

To shores where all was dumb. 

Yet, prophet-like, that lone one stood, 

With dauntless words and high. 
That shook the sere leaves froin the wood 

As if a storm pass'd by. 
Saying, We are twins in death, proud Sun, 
Thy face is cold, thy race is run, 

'T is mercy bids thee go ; 
For thou ten thousand thousand years 
Hast seen the tide of human tears, 

That shall no longer flow. 

What though beneath thee man put forth 

His pomp, his pride, his skill ; 
And arts that made fire, floods, and earth, 

The vassals of his will ; 
Yet mourn not I thy parted sway. 
Thou dim, discrowned king of day : 

For all those trophied arts 
And triumphs that beneath thee sprang, 
Heal'd not a passion or a pang 

Entail'd on human hearts. 

Go, let oblivion's curtain fall 

Upon the stage of men, 
Nor with thy rising beams recall 

Life's tragedy again. 
Its piteous pageants bring not back, 
Nor waken flesh upon the rack 

Of pain anew to writhe ; 
Stretch'd in disease's shapes abhorr'd, 
Or mown in battle by the sword, 

Like grass beneath the scythe. 

Even I am weary in yon skies 

To watch thy fading fire ; 
Test of all sumlcss agonies, 

Behold not me expire. 
My lips that speak thy dirge of death — 
Their rounded gasp and gurgling breath 

To see thou shalt not boast. 
The eclipse of Nature spreads my pall, — 
The majesty of darkness shall 

Receive my parting ghost ! 



This spirit shall return to Him 

That gave its heavenly spark ; 
Yet think not, Sun, it shall be dim 

When thou thyself art dark ! 
No ! it shall live again, and shine 
In bliss unknown to beams of thine, 

By Him recall'd to breath, 
Who captive led captivity. 
Who rolib'd the grave of victory, — 

A nd took the sting from death ! 

Go, Sun, while mercy holds me up 

On Nature's awful waste 
To drink this last and bitter cup 

Of grief that man shall taste — 
Go, tell that night that hides thy face, 
Thou saw'st the last of Adam's race, 

On earth's sepulchral clod, 
The darkening universe defy 
To quench his immortality. 

Or shake his trust in God ! 



YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND. 

Ye Mariners of Enfjland ! 

That guard our native seas ; 
Whose flag has braved a thousand years 

The battle and the breeze ! 
Your glorious standard launch again 

To match another foe ! 
And sweep through the deep. 

While the stormy tempests blow ; 
While the battle rages loud and long, 

And the stormy tempests blow. 

The spirits of your fathers 

Shall start from every wave, — 
For the deck it was their field of fame, 

And ocean was their grave: 
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell 

Your manly hearts shall glow, 
As ye sweep through the deep. 

While the stormy tempests blow, 
While the battle rages loud and long, 

And the stormy tempests blow. 

Britannia needs no bulwark, 

No towers along the steep; 
Her march is o'er the mountain waves, 

Her home is on the deep. 
With thunders from her native oak, 

She quells the floods below — 
As they roar on the shore. 

When the stormy tempests blow ; 
When the battle rages loud and long, 

And the stormy tempests blow. 

The meteor flag of England 

Shall yet terrific burn ; 
Till danger's troubled night depart, 

And the star of peace return. 
Then, then, ye ocean warriors! 

Our song and feast shall flow 
To the fame of your name. 

When the storm has ceased to blow ; 
When the fiery fight is heard no more. 

And the storm has ceased to blow. 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 



117 



BATTLE OF THE BALTIC. 

Of Nelson and the north, 

Sing the glorious day's renown, 
"When to battle fierce came forth 

All the might of Denmark's crown, 
And her arms along the deep proudly shone ; 

By each gun the lighted brand 

In a bold de'termined hand, 

And the prince of all the land 
Led them on. 

Like leviathans afloat, 

Lay their bulwarks on the brine; 
While the sign of battle flew 

On the lofty British line: 
It was ten of April morn by the chime 

As they driftnd on their path. 

There was silence deep as death ; 

And the boldest held his breath, 
For a time. 

But the might of England flush'd 

To anticipate the scene ; 
And her van the fleeter rush'd 

O'er the deadly space between. [gun 

« Hearts of oak," our captains cried ; when each 

From its adamantine lips 

Spread a death-shade round the ships, 

Like the hurricane eclipse 
Of the sun. 

Again ! again ! again ! 

And the havoc did not slack, 
Till a feeble cheerjhe Dane 

To our cheering sent us back; — 
Their shots along the deep slowly boom : — 

Then ceased — and all is wail. 

As they strike the shatter'd sail ; 

Or, in conflagration paie, 
Light the gloom. 

Outspoke the victor then. 

As he hail'd them o'er the wave, 
" Ye are brothers! ye are men ! 

And we conquer but to save : — 
So peace instead of death let us bring. 

But yield, proud foe, thy fleet. 

With the crews, at England's feet, 

And make submission meet 
To our king." 

Then Denmark blest our chief. 

That he gave her wrounds repose ; 
And the sounds of joy and grief. 

From her people wildly rose ; 
As death withdrew his shades from the day. 

While the sun look'd smiling bright 

O'er a wide and woful sight. 

Where the fires of funeral light 
Died away. 

Now joy, old England raise ! 

For the tidings of thy might. 
By the festal cities' bUize, 

While the wine-cup shines in light ; 



And yet amidst that joy and uproar, 
Let us think of them that sleep, 
Full many a fathom deep, 
By thy wild and stormy steep, 
Elsinore ! 

Brave hearts! to Britain's pride 

Once so faithful and so true, 
On the deck of Fame that died. 

With the gallant good Riou : 
Soft sigh the winds of heaven o'er their grave ! 

While the l)illow mournful rolls. 

And the mermaid's song condoles 

Singing glory to the souls 
Of the brave I 



EXILE OF ERIN^. 

There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin, 

The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill : 
For his country he sigh'd, when at twilight repairing 

To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill. 

But the day star attracted his eye's sad devotion. 

For it rose o'er his own native isle of the ocean, 

Where once, in the fire of his youthful emotion, 

He sang the bold anthem of Erin go bragh. 

Sad is my ''ate ! said the heart-broken stranger. 
The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee ; 

But I have no refuge from famine and danger, 
A home and a country remain not to me. 

Never again in the green sunny Ixjwers, 

Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the 
sweet hours. 

Or cover my harp with the wild woven flowers. 
And strike to the numbers of Erin go bragh ! 

Erin my coinitry ! though sad and forsaken. 

In dreams I revisit thy seabeaten shore; 
But alas! in a fair foreign land I awaken, [more. 
And sigh for the friends who can meet me no 
Oh cruel fate ! wilt thou never replace me [me T 
In a mansion of peace — where no perils can chase 
Never again, shall my brothers embrace me ; 
They died to defend me, or live to deplore ! 

Where is my cabin-door, fast by the wild wood 1 
Sisters and sire ! did ye weep for its fall ? 

Where is the mother that look'd on my childhood 1 
And where is the bosom friend dearer than all ? 

Oh ! my sad heart ! long altandon'd Jiy pleasure. 

Why did it doat on a fast-fading treasure ! 

Tears like the rain drop, may fall without measure ; 
But rapture and beauty they cannot recall. 

Yet all its sad recollection suppressing. 
One dying wish my lone bosom can draw, 

Erin ! an exile bequeaths thee his blessing! 
Land of my forefathers ! Erin go bragh ! 

Buried and cold, when my heart stills her motion, 

Green be thy fields — sweetest isle of the ocean ! 

And thy harp-striking bards sing aloud with de- 
votion — 
Erin mavournin ! — Erin go bragh ! 



118 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 



VALEDICTORY STANZAS TO J. P. 
KEMBLE, ESQ. 

Pride of the British stage, 

A lone; and last adieu ! 
Whose image brought the heroic age 

Revived to fancy's view 
Like fields refresh'd with dewy light 

When the sun smiles his last, 
Thy parting presence makes more bright 

Our memory of the past; 
And memory conjures feelings up 

That wine or music need not swell, 
As high we lift the festal cup 

To Kemble ! fare thee well ! 
His was the spell o'er hearts 

Which only acting lends, — 
The youngest of the sister arts, 

Where all their beauty blends : 
For ill can poetry express 

Full many a tone of thought sublime, 
And painting, muto and motionless, 

Steals but a glance of time. 
But by the mighty actor brought, 

Illusion's perfect triumphs come — 
Verse ceases to be airy thought. 

And sculpture to be dumb. 
Time may again revive, 

But ne'er eclipse the charm, 
When Cato spoke in him alive, 

Or Hotspur kindled warm. 
What soul was not resign'd entire 

To the deep sorrows of the Moor, — 
What English heart was not on fire 
' With him at A gin court? 
And yet a majesty possess'd 

His transport's most impetuous tone, 
And to each passion of his breast 

The graces gave their zone. 
High were the task — too high, 

Ye conscious bosoms here ! 
In words to paint your memory 

Of Kemble and of Lear; 
But who forgets that white discrowned head, 

Those bursts of reason's halt-extinguish'd 
glare — 
Those tears upon Cordelia's bosom shed. 

In doubt more touching than despair. 
If 'twas reality he felt ? 

Had Sliakspeare's self amidst you been, 
Friends, he had seen you melt. 

And triiyiiph'd to have seen ! 

And there was many an hour 

Of blended kindred fame. 
When Siddon's auxiliar power 

And sister magic came. 
Together at the Muse's side 

The tragic paragons had grown — 
They were the children of her pride. 

The columns of her throne. 
And undivided favour ran 

From heart to heart in their applause, 
Save for the gallantry of man, 

In lovelier woman's cause. 



Fair as some classic dome, 

Robust and richly graced, 
Your Kemble' s spirit was tlje home 

Of genius and of taste : — 
Taste like the silent dial's power, 

That when supernal light is given, 
Can measure inspiration's hour, 

And tell its height in heaven. 
At once ennobled and correct. 

His mind survey 'd the tragic page, 
And what the actor could effect. 

The scholar could presage. 

These were his traits of worth : — 

And must we lose them now ! 
And shall the scene no more show forth 

His sternly pleasing brow \ 
Alas, the moral brings a tear ! — 

'Tis all a transient hour below ; 
And we that would detain thee here. 

Ourselves as fleetly go ! 
Yet shall our latest age 

This parting scene review ; — 
Pride of the British stage, 

A long and last adieu ! 



THE SOLDIER'S DREAM. 

Oun bugles sang truce — for the night-cloud, had 
lower'd 
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky ; 
And thousands had sunk on the ground over- 
power'd. 
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die. 

When reposing that night on my pallet of straw. 
By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain; 

At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw, 
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again. 

Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array, 
Far, far I had roam'd on a desolate track ; 

'Twas autumn — and sunshine arose on the way 
To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me 
back. 

I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft 

In life's morning march, when my bosom was 
young; 
I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft. 
And knew the swtet strain that the corn-reapers 
sung. 

Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore 
From my home and my weeping friends never 
to part ; 

My little ones kiss'd me a thousand limes o'er, 
And my wife sobb'd aloud in her fulness of heart. 

Stay, stay with us — rest, thou art weary and worn, 
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay ; 

But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn. 
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away. 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 



119 



DESCRIPTION OF WYOMING. 

O.v Susquehana's side, fair Wyomina; ! 
Akhougli the wild-flower on thy ruiri'd wall 
And roofless homes, a sad remembrance bring 
Of what thy gentle peufjle did befall ; 
Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all 
Tl»at see the Atlantic wave their morn restore. 
Sweet land ! may I thy lost delights recall, 
And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore, 
Whose beauty was the love of Pennsylvania's shore! 

Delightfid Wyoming ! beneath thy skies. 
The happy shepherd sv^'ains had naught to do 
But feed their flocks on green declivities, 
Or skim perchance thy lake with light canoe 
From morn, till evening's sweeter pastime grew, 
With timbrel, when beneath the forests brown. 
Thy lovely maidens would the dance renew. 
And aye those sunny mountains hah-way down 
Would echo flageolet from some romantic town. 

Then, where on Indian hills the daylight takes 
His leave, how might you the flamingo see 
Disporting like a meteor on the lakes — 
And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree: 
And every sound of life was full of glee, 
From merry mock-bird's song, or hum of men ; 
While, hearkening, fearing naught their revelry. 
The wild deerarch'd his neck from glades, and then 
Unhunted, sought his woods and wilderness again. 

And scarce had Wyoming of war or crime 
Heard, hut in transatlantic story sung. 
For here the exile met from every clime, 
And spoke in friendsliip every distant tongue: 
Men from tlie blood of warring Europe sprung. 
Were hut divided by the running brook ; 
And happy where no Rhenisli trumpet rung, 
On plains no sieging mine's volcano shook. 
The blue-eyed Gcrntan changed his sword to pru- 
ning-hook. 

Nor far some Andalusian saraband 
Would sound to many a native roundelay — 
But who is he tiiat yet a dearer land 
Reniembers, over hills and far away ? 
Green Albin ! what though he no more survey 
'i'hy ships at anchor on the quiet shore, 
Thy pellochs rolling from the mountain bay, 
'J'hy lone sepulchral cairn upon the moor. 
And distant isles that hear the ioud Corbrechtan 
roar ! 

Alas! poor Caledonia's mountaineer, 
That want's stern edict e'er, and feudal grief. 
Had forced him from a home he loved so dear! 
Yet found he here a home, and glad relief. 
And plied the beverage from his own fair sheaf. 
That fired his Highland blood with mickic glee: 
And England sent her men, of men the chief, 
Who taught those sires of Empire yet to be, 
'J'o plant the tree of life, — to plant fair Freedom's 
tree ! 

Here was not mingled in the city's pomp 
Of life's extremes the grandeur nnd ♦!"> gloom; 
Judgment awoke not here her di'^ivol trump, 
Nor seal'd in blood a fellow-creature's doom, 



Nor mourn'd the captive in a living tomb. 
One venerable man, beloved of all, 
Sufficed, where innocence was yet in bloom, 
To sway the strife, that seldom might befall : 
And Albert was their judge in patriarchal hall. 



DIRGE OF OUTALISSL 

AxT) I could weep ! — the Oneyda chief 
His descant wildly thus begun: — 

But that I may not stain with grief 
The death-song of my father's son, 
Or bow his head in wo ! 

For by my wrongs, and by my wrath ! 

To-morrow Areouski's breath 

(That fires yon heaven with storms of death) 
Shall light us to the foe ; 

And we shall share, my Christian bov, 

'i"he foeman's blood, the avenger's joy ! 

But thee, my flower, whose breath was given 

By milder genii o'er the deep, 
The spirits of the white man's heaven 

Forbid not thee to weep : — 
Nor will the Christian host, 
Nor will thy father's spirit grieve. 
To see thee, on the battle's eve, 
Lamenting, take a mournful leave 
Of her who loved thee most: 
She was the rainbow to thy sight ; 
Thy sun — thy heaven — of lost delight ! 

To-morrow let us do or die ! 

But when the bolt of death is hurl'd, 
Ah ! whither then with thee to fly, 

Shall Outalissi roam the world 1 
Seek we thy once-loved home T 
The hand is gone that cropt its flowers : 
Unlieard their clock repeats its hours; 
Cold is the hearth within their bowers ! 

And should we thither roam, 
Its echoes, and its empty tread, 
Would sound like voices from the dead ! 

Or shall we cross yon mountains blue, 

Whose streams my kindred nation quaff 'd1 

And by my side, in battle true, 

A thousand warriors drew the shaft ? 
Ah! there in desolation cold, 

The desert serpent dwells alone. 

Where grass o'ergrovvs each mouldering bone; 

And stones themselves, to ruin grown 
Like me, aVe death-like old. 

Then seek we not their camp, — for there — 

'i'he silence dwells of my despair !" 

But hark, the trump ! — to-morrow thou 
In glory's fires shalt dry thy tears: 

Even from the land of shadows now 
My father's awful ghost appears. 

Amidst the clouds that round us roll ; 

He bids my soul for battle thirst — 

He bids nie dry the last — the first — 

The only tears that ever burst 
From Outalissi's soul ; 

Because I may not stain with grief 

The death-song of an Indian chief! 



120 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 



THE FALL OF POLAND. 

Oh, sacred Truth! thy triumph ceased a while, 
And Hope, thy sister, ceased with thee to smile, 
"When leagued oppression pour'd to Northern wars 
Her whisker'd pandoors and her fierce hussars. 
Waved her dread standard to the breeze of morn, 
Peal'd her loud drum, and twang'd her trumpet 

horn ; 
Tumultuous horror brooded o'er her van. 
Presaging wrath to Poland — and to man ! 

Warsaw's last champion from her height survey'd, 
Wide o'er the fields, a waste of ruin laid, — 
Oh, heaven ! he cried, my bleeding country save ! — 
Is there no hand on high to shield the brave ? 
Yet, though destruction sweep these lovely plains, 
Rise, fellow-men ! our country yet remains ! 
By that dread name, we wave the sword on high! 
And swear for her to live ! — with her to die ! 

He said, and on the rampart-heights array'd 
His trusty warriors, few but undismay'd ; 
Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form, 
Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm ; 
Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly, 
Revenge, or death, — the watch-word and reply ; 
Then peal'd the notes, omnipotent to charm, 
And the loud tocsin toU'd their last alarm! — 

In vain, alas ! in vain, ye gallant few ! 
From rank to rank your volley'd thunder flew : — 
Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of Time, 
Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime; 
Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe. 
Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her wo ! 
Dropp'dfrom her nerveless grasp the shatter'd spear. 
Closed her bright eye, and curb'd her high career; — 
Hope for a season, bade the world farewell. 
And Freedom shriek'd — as Kosciusko fell ! 



HOHENLINDEN. 

Ox I^inden, when the sun was low. 
All bloodless hiy the untrodden snow, 
And dark as winter was the flow 
Of Iscr, rolling rapidly. 

But Linden saw another sis-vht. 
When the drum beat, at dead of night, 
Commanding fires of death to light 
The darkness of her scenery. 

By torch and trumpet fast array'd, 
Each horseman drew his battle-blade, 
And furious every charger neigh'd 
To join the dreadful revelry. 

Then shook the hills with thunder riven, 
Then rush'd the steed to battle driven, 
And louder than the bolts of heaven. 
Far flash'd the red artillery. 

And redder yet that lisht shall cflow 
On Linden's hills of stained snow, 
And bloodier vet the torrent flow 
Of Iser, rolling rapidly. 



'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun 
Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun, 
Where furious Frank, and fiery Hun, 
Shout in their sulphurous canopy. 

The combat deepens. On, ye brave, 
Who rush to glory, or the grave ! 
Wave, Munich, all thy banners wave ! 
And charge with all thy chivalry ! 

Few, few shall part where many meet ! 
The snow shall be their winding-sheet, 
And every turf beneath their feet, 
Shall be a soldier's sepulchre. 



CAROLINE. 

I 'll bid my hj'acinth to blow, 
I '11 teach my grotto green to be. 

And sing my true love, all below 
The holly bower and myrtle-tree. 

There, all his wild-wood scents to bring, 
The sweet south wind shall wander by. 

And with the music of his wing 
Delight my rustling canopy. 

Come to my close and clustering bower, 

Thou spirit of a milder clime ! 
Fresh with the dews of fruit and flower. 

Of mountain-heath and moory thyme. 

With all thy rural echoes come. 
Sweet comrade of the rosy day. 

Wafting the wild bee's gentle hum. 
Or cuckoo's plaintive roundelay. 

Where'er thy morning breath has play'd. 
Whatever isles of ocean fann'd. 

Come to my blossom-woven shade. 
Thou wandering wind of fairy land ! 

For sure, from some enchanted isle, 

Where heaven and love their sabbath hold. 

Where pure and happy spirits smile, 
Of beauty's fairest, brightest mould ; 

From some green Eden of the deep. 
Where pleasure's sigh alone is heaved, 

Where tears of rapture lovers weep, 
Endear'd, undoubling, undeceived ; 

From some sweet paradise afar, 
Thy music wanders, distant, lost ; 

Where Nature lights her leading star. 
And love is never, never cross'd. 

Oh, gentle gale of Eden bowers, 
If back thy rosy feet should roam. 

To revel with the cloudless hours 
In Nature's more propitious home. 

Name to thy loved Elysian groves. 
That o'er enchanted spirits twine, 

A furor form than cherub loves. 
And let the name be Caroline. 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 



12] 



O'CONNOR'S CHILD. 

Oh, once the harp of Innisfail 

Was strung full high to notes of gladness ; 
But yet it often told a tale 

Of more prevailing sadness. 
Sad was the note, and wild its flill, 

As winds that moan at night forlorn 
Along the isles of Fion-Gael, 

When for O'Connor's child to mourn, 
The harper told how lone, how far 
From any mansion's twinkling star, 
From any path of social men. 
Or voice, hut from the fox's den. 
The lady in the desert dwelt, 
And yet no wrongs, no fear she felt: 
Say, why should dwell in place so wild 
The lovely, pale O'Connor's child 1 

Sweet lady ! she no more inspires 

Green Erin's heart with beauty's power. 
As in the palace of her sires 

She bloom'd a peerless flower. 
Gone from her hand and bosom, gone. 

The regal broche, the jewell'd ring, 
That o'er her dazzling whiteness shone 

Like dews on lilies of the spring. 
Yet why, though fallen her brother's kerne. 
Beneath De Bourgo's battle stern. 
While yet in Leinster unexplored. 
Her friends survive the English sword ; 
Why lingers she from Erin's host. 
So fixr on Galway's shipwreck'd coast: 
Why wanders she a huntress wild — 
The lovely, pale O'Connor's child ? 

And, fix'd on empty space, whv burn 

Her eyes with momentary wildness; 
And vi'hcrcfore do they then return 

To more than woman's mildness? 
Dishevell'd are her raven locks. 

On Connocht Moran's name she calls ; 
And oft amidst the lonely rocks 

She sings sweet madrigals. 
Placed in the foxglove and the moss, 
Behold a parted warrior's cross ! 
That is a s])ot where, evermore. 
The lady, at her shieling door. 
Enjoys that in communion sweet, 
The living and the dc;id can meet: 
For lo ! to lovelorn fantasy, 
The hero of her heart is nigh. 

Bright as the bow that spans the storm. 

In Erin's yellow vesture clad, 
A son of light — a lovely form. 

He comes and makes her glad : 
Now on the grass-green turf he sits. 

His tassell'd horn beside him laid; 
Now o'er the hills in chase he flits, 

The hunter and the deer a shade ! 
Sweet mourner! those arc shadows vain 

'I'hat cross the twiliuht of her brain ; 
Yet she will tell you she is blest, 
Of Connocht Moran's tomb possess'd. 
More richly than in Agbrim's bower. 
When bards high praised her beauty's power, 
J6 



And kneeling pages ofTer'd up 
The niorat in a golden cup. 
' A hero's bride ! this desert bower. 

It ill befits thy gentle breeding: 
And wherefore dost tiiou love this flower 

To call — My love lies bleeding?" 
"This purple flower my tears have nursed; 

A hero's blood supplied its bloom : 
I love it, for it was the tirst 

That grew on Connocht Moran's tomb. 
O. hearken, stranger, to my voice ; 
This desert mansion is my choice; 
And blest, though fatal, be the star 
'J'hat led me to its wilds afar : 
For here these pathless mountains free 
Gave shelter to my love and me ; 
And every rock and every stone 
Bore witness that he was my own. 

" O'Connor's child, I was the bud 

Of Erin's royal tree of glory ; 
But wo to them that wrapt in blood 

The tissue of my story ! 
Still as I clasp my burning brain, 

A death-scene rushes on my sight; 
It rises o'er and o'er again, 

The bloody feud — the fatal night. 
When chafing Connocht Moran's scorn, 
They call'd my hero basely born, 
And bade him choose a meaner bride 
1'han from O't'onnor's house of pride. 
Their tribe, they said, their high degree. 
Was sung in 'J'ara's psaltery ; 
Witness their Eath's victorious brand, 
And Calhal of the bloody hand, — 
Glory (they said) and power and honour 
Were in the mansion of O'Connor; 
But he, my loved one, bore in field 
A meaner crest upon his shield. 

"Ah. brothers! what did it avail 

That fiercely and triumphantly 
"V e fought the English of the pale. 

And stcmm'd De Bourgo's chivalry 1 
And what was it to love and me 

'J'hat barons by your standard rode ; 
Or beal-fires, for your jubilee, 

Upon a hundred mountains glow'd? 
What though the lords of tower and dome 
From Shannon to the North-sea foam, — 
Thought ye your iron hands of pride 
Could break the knot that love had tied? 
No: — let the eagle change his plume, 
l^he leaf its hue, the flower its bloom; 
But ties around this heart were spun. 
That could not, would not, be undone. 

"At bleating of the wild watch fold 

Thus srang my love — ' O, come with me, 

Our bark is on the lake : behold, 
Our steeds are fasten'd to the tree. 

Come far from Castle-Connor's clans- 
Come with thy belted forestere. 

And I beside the lake of swans 

Shall bunt for thee the fallow deer, 

And build thy hut and bring thee home 

The wild fowl and the honeycomb ; 



132 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 



And berries from the wood provide. 
And play my eliirslieeli by thy side. 
Then come, my love!' — How could I stayl 
Our uiiiible stug-houiids triick'd the way, 
And I pursued, by moonless skies, 
The light o\' Oonnocht Moran's eyes. 

"And fast and far, before the star 

Of d;»yspring rush'd me tiirough the gh'de, 
And saw at dawn the 'ofty biiwii 

Of Castle Connor fade. 
Sweet was to us the hermitage 

Of this unplough'd. untrodden shore: 
Like birils all joyous from the cage, 

For man's neglect we loved it more. 
And well he knew, my iiuntsman doar. 
To search the game with hawk and spear; 
While 1, his evening f )od to dress. 
Would sing to him in iiappiness. 
But oh. that midnight of despair ! 
When I was doom'd to rend my hair: 
The night, to me, of shrieking sorrow ! 
The night, to him, that had no morrow ! 

'' When all was hnsh'd at eventide, 

I heard tlu^ haying of their beagle: 
'Hi' luisli'd !' my Contiociit Moran cried, 

' 'Tis liut the screaming of the eagle.' 
Alas! 'twas not the eyrie's sound. 

Their bloody bands had track'd us out : 
Up-listening starts our couchant hound, — 

And hark ! again that nearer shout 
Brings faster on the murderers. 
'Spare — spare him — Ba/.il — Desmond fierce!' 
In vain — no voice the adder charms ; 
Their weapons cross'd my sheltering arms : 
Another's sword has taiil him low — 

Another's and another's ; 
And every haiul that dealt the blow — 

Ah me ! it was a !• ■other's ! 
Yes, when his luoarunss ilied away, 
Their iron hands iiad (Ih;; the clay, 
And o'er his burial turf tliev trod. 
And I beheld— O (io.l ! O Cod ! 
His life-blood oozing from the sod ! 

" Warm in his death-wounds sepulchred, 

Alas! my warrior's spirit i>rave 
Nor mass nor ulla-lulla heard. 

Lamenting; soothe his grave. 
Dratju'd to their hated mansion back. 

How long in thraldom's grasp I lay 
I know not, for my soul was black. 

And knew no change of night or day. 
One night of horror round me grew; 
Or if I saw, or felt, or knew, 
'Twas but when those grim visages, 
The angry brothers of my race, 
Glared on each eyeball's aching throb, 
And check'd my bosom's power to sob; 
Or when luy heart with jiulses drear, 
Beat like a death-watch to my ear. 

"But Heaven, at last, my soul's eclipse 
Did with a vision bright inspire : 

I woke, and felt upon my lips 
A prophetess's tire. 



Thrice in the east a war-drum beat, 

I heard the Saxon's trumpet sound, 
And ranged as to the judgment seat 

My guilty, trembling brothers rovmd. 
Clad in the helm and shield they can>e ; 
For now De Bonrgo's sword and flame 
Had ravaged Ulster's boundaries. 
And lighted up the luidnight skies. 
'J'he standard of O'Connor's sway 
Was in the turret wliere I lay: 
That standard, with so dire a look. 

As ghastly shone the moon and pale, 
I gave — that every bosom shook 

Beneath its iron mail. 

" And go ! I cried, the condiat seek: 

Ye hearts that unappalled bore 
The anguish of a sister's shriek, 

Go — and return no more ! 
For sooner guilt the ordeal brand 

Shall grasp uiduirt, then ye shall hold 
The banner with victorious hand. 

Beneath a sister's curse uuroU'd. 

stranger! by my country's loss! 
And by my love ; and by the cross! 

1 swear I never could have spoke 
'J'he curse tluit sever'd nature's yoke; 
But tiiat a spirit o'er me stood. 

And lired me with the wrathful mood; 
And frensy to my heart was given. 
To speak the malison of Heaven. 

"They would have cross'd themselves all mute, 

'J'hey would have pray'd to burst the spell 
But at the stamping of my foot 

Each hand down powerless fell ! 
.-\nd go to Athumee ! I cried; 
High lift the bamicr of your {)ride ! 
But know that where its sheet unrolls 
The weight of blood is on your souls ! 
Co where the havoc of your kerne 
Shall float as high as mountain fern ! 
Men shall no more ytnir mansion know ! 
'I'he nettles on your hearth shall grow ! 
Dead as the green, oblivious flood, 

That mantles by your walls, shall be 
The glory of O'Conimr's blood I 

Awav ! away to Athunree! 
M'here downward when the sun shall fall 
The raven's wing shall be your pall; 
And not a vassal shall uidace 
The vi/.or from your dying face ! 

" A bolt that overhung- our dome 

Suspended till my curse was given, 
Soon as it pass'tl these lips of foam 

I'eal'd in the blood-red heaven. 
Dire was the look that o'er their backs 

The angry parting brothers threw ; 
But now, behold! like cataracts, 

(/ome down the hills in view 
0'{]!onnor's plumed partisans, 
Thrice ten Innisfallian elans 

Were uuuching to their doom : 
A sudden storm their plumage toss'd, 
A flash of lightning o'er them cross'd, 

And all again was gloom ; 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 



123 



But once again in heaven the hands 
Of tliurider-spirits clapt their hands. 

" Stranpfcr ! I fleil the home of ^rief. 

At Coiinocht Moraii'w tornli to fiill ; 
I found the iiehnet of my chief, 

His how still hanging on our wall; 
And took it down, and vow'd to rove 

Tiiis desert place a huntress hold ; 
Nor would I change iiiy buried love 

For any heart of living mould. 
No ! for [ am a licro's diild, 
I'll hunt my quarry in the wild ; 
And still my home this mansion make, 

(Jf all unheeded and unheeding, 
And cherish, for my warrior's sake, 

The flower of Love-lies-bleeding." 



LAST SCENE IN GERTRUDE OF 
WYOMING. 

A scRVE of death ! whine fires heneath the sun, 
^And blended arms, and white pavilions glow : 
And for the business of destruction done, 
Its requiem the war-horn seem'd to blow. 
There sad s)jectatress of her country's wo ! 
The lovely Gertrude, safe from present harm. 
Had laid her cheek, and clasp'd hi;r hands of snow 
On Waldegrave's shoulder, half within his arm 
Enclosed, that felt her heart, and hush'd its wild 
alarm I 

But siiort that contemplation — sad and short 
The pause that bid each much-loved scene adieu ! 
Beneath the very shadow of th(! fort, [flew ; 

Where friendly swords were drawn, and banners 
Ah ! who could deem that loot of Indian crew 
Was near] — yet there, with lusi of murderous 

deeds, 
Glearn'd like a hasilisk, from woods in view, 
The arnbush'd foeman's eye — his volley speeds. 
And Albert, Albert falls ! the dear old father bleeds. 

And tranced in giddy horror Gertrude swoon'd ; 
Yet, while she clasps him lifeless to her zone. 
Say, burst they, borrow'd from her f ither's wounds, 
These drops'! — God ! the life-blood is her own. 
And faltering, on her Waldegrave's bosom thrown, 
"Weep not, O love!" she cries, "to see me bleed — 
Thee, Gertrude's sad survivor, thee alone 
Heaven's peace commiserate; for scarce I heed 
These wounds; — yet thee to leave is death, is 
death indeed. 

"Clasp me a little longer, on the brink 
■ Of fate ! while I can feel thy divar caress ; 
And when this heart hath ceased to beat, O think. 
And let it mitigate thy wo's excess. 
That thou hast been to me all tenderness. 
And friend to more than human friendship just. 
Oh ! by that retrospect of happiness, 



And hy the hopes of an immortal trust, 
God shall assuage thy pangs when I am laid in dust! 

" Go, Henry, go not back, when I depart, 
The scene thy bursting tears too deep will move. 
Where my dear father took thee to his heart, 
And Gertrude thought it ecstasy to rove 
With thee, as with an angel, through the grove 
Of peace, — imagining her lot was cast 
In heaven ; for ours was not like earthly love. 
And must this parting be our very lastl 
No! I shall love thee still when death itself is past. 

"Half could I bear, methinks. to leave this earth. 
Anil thee, more loved than aught beneath the sun, 
If I had lived to smile but on the birth 
Of one dear pledge; — btM shall there then be none 
In' future times — no gentle little one. 
To clasp thy neck, and look, resembling me? 
Yet .seems it, even while lif(;'s last pul.ses run, 
A sweetness in the cup of deiitli. to be 
Lord of my bosom's love! to die beholding thee !" 

Hush'd were his Gertrude's lips ; but still their 
And beautiful expression seem'd to melt [bland 
With love that could not die ! and .still his hand 
She presses to the heart no more that felt. 
Ah ! heart where once each fond affection dwelt, 
And features yet that spoke a soul more fair. 



THE BEECH-TREE'S PETITION. 

Oh, leave this barren spot to me ! 
•Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree! 
Though bush or floweret never grow 
My dark, unwarming shade below; 
Nor summer bud perfume the dew 
Of rosy blush or yellow hue; 
Nor fruits of autumn, blossom-horn. 
My green and glossy leaves adorn ; 
Nor murmuring tribes from me derive 
'I'h' ambrosial amber of the hive ; 
Yet leave this barren spot to me : 
Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree! 

Thrice twenty summers I have .seen 
The sky grow bright, the forest green; 
And many a wintry wind have stood 
In bloondess, fruitless solitude. 
Since childhood in my ]dea.sant bower 
First spent its sweet and sportive hour; 
Since youthful lovers in my shade 
Their vows of truth and rajjture made, 
And on my trunk's surviving frame 
Carved many a long-forgotten name. 
Oh ! by the sighs of gentle sound. 
First breathed upon this sacred ground; 
By all that love has whisper'd here. 
Or beauty heard with ravish'd ear; 
As love's own altar honour me : 
Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree ! 



WILLIAM HERBERT. 



The Honourable and Very Reverend Wil- 
liam Herbert, now Dean of Manchester, was 
born in 1778, in the county of Hampshire, 
and is the third son of Henry third Earl of 
Caernarvon and Lady Elizabeth Wyndham, 
sister of the late Earl of Egremont, being de- 
scended directly on the father's side from tlie 
Earls of Pembroke, and on the mother's from 
the Earls of Percy. He was educated at Eton, 
with his brother, the late earl, who was him- 
self distinguished for his ability as a speaker 
in the House of Lords, and for his strenuous 
denunciation of King. George the Fourth 
in the matter of the divorce of Queen Caro- 
line. From Eton Mr. Herbert went to 
Christ's Church, Oxford, in which univer- 
sity he was afterward elected fellow of Merton 
College; and both at school and the univer- 
sity he obtained high distinction as a classical 
scholar. He adopted civil and ecclesiastical 
law as his profession, became a member of 
Doctors Commons, was retained largely by 
American shipholders in the admiralty suits 
previous to the last war, and in the case of the 
Snipe, delivered an argument which was con- 
sidered the ablest that was produced in any 
of those cases, and which Sir William Scott 
said contained so many and strong new points 
that he must take time to consider previous to 
giving a decision. During the consideration, 
however, war was declared, in consequence 
of earlier confiscations, and the decision was 
at length adverse. About this time Mr. 
HERBEiiT was returned to the House of Com- 
mons for the borough of Cricklade in Wilt- 
shire, and afterward for his native county, in 
a strongly contested election, and in the 
House soon came to be considered a rising 
member of uncommon promise. During this 
lime he had the satisfaction of sharing the 
glory of the immortal Wilberforce, with 
whom he was a steady co-operator, in the abo- 
lition of the slave trade. Shortly afterward, 
all hopes of the Whig party, to which he was 
attached, coming into power, being destroyed 
by the change in the Prince Regent's policy, 
and his brother having sold the borough of 
Cricklade, Mr. Herbert, who had in the 



meantime married the daughter of Viscount 
Allen, — with an increasing family, and no 
hopes of political success, — took orders in 
the church, for which he had always felt a 
strong inclination, and was inducted to a 
valuable rectory in Yorkshire, in the gift of 
his uncle the Earl of Egremont, where he has 
constantly resided since 1816, dividing his 
time between his parishioners, his literary 
pursuits, and his beautiful gardens and col- 
lection of exotics. In 1840 he was installed 
to the deanery of Manchester, whereby his 
sphere of utility and benevolence has been 
very much increased, although it is to be 
feared that his leisure for literary occupation 
may be considered almost at an end. 

P.Ir. Herbert's writings are in many lan- 
guages, and are as remarkable for their variety, 
as for their depth, their compass, and their cor- 
rectness. As a botanist, it would probably not 
be too much to say, that throughout the world 
he has no living superior ; as a naturalist and 
ornithologist, he has produced much new and 
accurate information ; as a preacher, he is one 
of the first in the church of which he is among 
the brightest ornaments. As a classical scho- 
lar, of exquisite taste and finish, his whole 
mind thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the 
Greek and Roman orators and poets, he has 
been favourably known from his childhood 
upward ; and he still continues to compose in 
the dead languages with fluency and grace, as 
some of our selections from his recent works 
will show. At a period when the tongues of 
northern Europe, the Scandinavian and Scla- 
vonic, little known even now, were utterly 
unstudied, Mr. Herbert made hims.elf so 
thoroughly a proficient in their intricacies as 
to compose in them likewise easily and well ; 
as also in the sweeter and more usually 
known languages of Italy and Spain. 

His poetry consists, for the most part, of 
original poems and translations, either on the 
northern model, or from the northern tongue. 
The grandest and most sustained of all is 
"Attila," which the Edinburgh Review pro- 
nounced the most Miltonic poem that has 
appeared since " Paradise Regained." Their 



WILLIAM HERBERT. 



125 



character will be best shown by the copious 
extracts given below ; it may not be, however, 
superfluous to add, that in his knowledge and 
practice of rythm and versification, no one is 
superior to our author. 

After the withdrawal of Lord P'rancis 
Egerton from the chair of the British Asso- 
ciation, when it was assembled at Manchester, 
his place was supplied by the Dean, who took 
the opportunity of delivering a handsome 
compliment to Mr, Everett, and America, 
of which country, as being in politics a mild 
and now conservative Whig, he has ever been 



a steady and consistent friend. In politics 
he gave his support to the movers of Roman 
Catholic emancipation; and he seconded the 
nomination of Lord Moupeth fur Yorkshire 
during the excitement previous to the passage 
of the reform bill, in favour of which he voted. 
It may not be impertinent to add, that he has 
recently been elected a corresponding member 
of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Phila- 
delphia. An edition of his writings, compris- 
ing his poems, criticisms, and sermons, was 
published by Bohn, in three large octavo vo- 
lumes, in 1842. 



THE PHANTOM FIGHT. 

The night was calm and murky ; the soft gale 
Scem'd to diffuse fair peace oVr hill and vale ; 
But Hilda slept not, whom the strong desire 
Of her lost Hedin gnaw'd with secret tire. 
To the still grave she bent her fearless way. 
While her dark thoughts with nature's gloom 

conspire ; 
Awhile she seem'd kj anguish to survey 
The monumental pile above his mouldering clay. 

But not to mourn sh/- sought that mansion lone, 
Or weep unseen up6u the dreary stone, 
And in her sorrow there was nothing meek ; 
Gloomy her eye, and lowering seem'd to speak 
A soul by deep and struggling cares distraught ; 
And the bright hectic flush upon her cheek 
Told the mind's fever, and the darkling thought 
With haughty high designs and steadfast passion 
fraught. 

Strange signs upon the tomb her hands did trace ; 
Then to the witching north she turn'd her face, 
And in slow measure breathed that fiital strain, 
Whose awful harmony can wake the slain, 
Rive the cold grave, and work the charmer's will. 
Thrice, as she call'd on Hedin, rang the plain ; 
Thrice echo'd the dread name from hill to hill! 
Thrice the dark wold sent back the sound, and all 
was still. 

Then shook the ground as by an earthquake rent. 
And the deep bowels of the tonih upscnt 
A voice, a shriek, a terror ; sounds that seem'd 
Like those wild fancies by a sinner dream'd ; 
A clang of deadly wt^apons, and a shout: 
With livin? strength the heaving granite teem'd, 
Inward convulsion, and a fearful rout, [out. 

As if fiends fought with fiends, and hell wasbursting 

And then strange mirth broke frantic on her ear, 
As if the evil one was lurking near ; 
While spectres wan. wit!\ visage pale and stark, 
Pee))'d ghastly throu2;h the curtain of the dark, 
With such dire laugh as yjhrcnsy doth bewray, 
It needs a gifted hand, with skill to mark 



Hilda's proud features, which no dread betray, 
Calm amid lonesome deeds and visions of dismay. 

On her pale forehead stream'd an eyrie light 
From that low mansion of infernal night, 
Displaying her fair shape's majestic mould 
In heauteous stillness; but an eye that told 
More sense of inward rapture than of wo. 
Thoughts of forbidden joy, and yearnings bold. 
On the lone summits of eternal snow [glow. 

So shines, in nature's calm, the pure sky's azure 

Speechless she gazed, as from the yawning tomb 
Rose Hedin, clad as when he met his doom. 
Dark was bis brow, his armour little bright, 
And dim the lustre of his joyless sight ; 
His habergeon with blood all sprinkled o'er. 
Portentous traces of that deadly fight. 
His pallid cheek a mournful sadness wore. 
And his long flowing locks were all defiled with gore. 

There have been tho.se, who, longing for the dead, 
Have gazed on vacancy till reason fled ; 
And some dark vision of the wandering mind 
Had ta'en the airy shape of human kind. 
Giving strange voice to echoes of the night. 
And warning sounds by heaven's high will de- 

sign'd : 
But this was bodily which met her sight, 
And palpable as once in days of young delight. 

High throbb'd her heart ; the pulse of youth 

swell'd high ; 
Love's ardent lightning kindled in her eye ; 
And she has sprung into the arms of death, 
Clasp'd his cold limbs, in kisses drunk bis breath ; 
In one wild trance of rapturous passion blest. 
And reckless of the bell that yawn'd beneath. 
On bis dire corslet beats her heaving breast, 
And by her burning mouth his icy lips are press'd. 

Stop, fearless beauty ! hope not that the grave 
Will yield its wealth, which frantic passion gave, 
Though spells accursed may rend the solid earth, 
Hell's })bantoms never wake for joy or mirth ! 
Hope not that love with death's cold hand can wed. 
Or draw ni'j;ht's spirits to a secoml liirfh ! 
Mark the dire vision of the mound with dread. 
Gaze on thy horrid work, and tremble for the dead ! 
l2 



126 



WILLIAM HERBERT. 



All arm'd, behold her vengeful father rise. 
And loud, " Forbear, dishonour'd bride !" he cries. 
With starting sinews from her grasp has sprung 
The cold wan form, round which her arms were 
Again in panoply of warlike steel [flung; 

They wake those echoes to which Leyra rung ; 
Fierce and more fierce each blow they seem to deal, 
And smite with ruthless blade the limbs that nothing 
feel. 

Darkling she stands beside the silent grave, 
And sees them wield the visionary glaive. 
What charm has life for her that can compare 
With the deep thrill of that renew'd despair? 
To raise the fatal ban, and ga.i,e unseen, 
As once in hope, on all her fondest care ! 
In death's own field life's trembling joys to glean, 
And draw love's keen delight from that abhorr'd 



The paths of bliss are joyous, and the breast 
Of thoughtless youth is easy to be blest. 
There is a charm in the loved maiden's sigh ; 
There is sweet pleasure in the calm blue sky. 
When nature smiles around ; the mild control 
Of buoyant fancy bids the pulse throb high ; 
But when strong passit)n has engross'd the soul, 
AU other joys are dead ; that passion is its whole. 

The beaming sun may wake the dewy spring. 
The flowers may smile, and the blithe greenwood 

ring ; 
Soft music's touch may pour its sweetest lay, 
And young hearts kindle in their hour of May ; 
But not for Hilda shall life's visions glow ; 
One dark deep thought must on her bosom prey. 
Her joys lie buried in the tomb below, [flow. 
Andfrom night's phantoms paleherdeadly bliss must 

There still each eve, as northern stories tell. 
By that lone mound her spirit wakes the spell ; 
Whereat those warriors, charmed by the lay, 
Renew, as if in sport, the deadly fray : 
Till when, as paler grows the gloom of night, 
And faint begins to peer the morning's ray, 
The spectre pageant ftdeth from the sight. 
And vanisheth each form before the eye of light. 



THE DESCENT TO HELA. 

Hatit) by the eastern gate of hell 
In ancient time great Vala fell; 
And there she lies in massive tomb 
Shrouded by night's eternal gloom, 
Fairer than gods, and wiser, she 
Held the slranee keys of destiny ; 
And not one dark mysterious hour 
Was veil'd from her all-searching power. 
She knew what chanced, ere time began, 
Ere world there was, or gods, or man ; 
And, had she list, she might have told 
Of things that would appal the bold. 
No mortal tongue has ever said 
What hand unknown laid Vala dead ; 



But yet, if rumour rightly tells, 
In her cold bones the spirit dwells ; 
And, if intruder bold presume. 
Her voice unfolds his hidden doom : 
And oft the rugged ear of death 
Is soothed by her melodious breath, 
Slow-rising from the hollow stone 
In witching notes and solemn tone ; 
Immortal strains, that tell of things. 
When the young down was on the wings 
Of hoary Time, and sometimes swell 
With such a wild enchanting spell, 
As heard above would fix the eye 
Of nature in sweet ecstasy. 
Steal every sense from mortal clay, 
And drag the willing soul away. 

Dark is the path, and wild the road, 
That leads unto that dread abode ; 
By shelving steeps, through brier and wood, 
Through yawning clitf and cavern'd flood, 
Where thousand treacherous spirits dwell, 
Loose the huge stones, bid waters swell, 
And guard the dire approach of hell. 
And none, since that high Lord of heaven, 
To whom the sword of death is given, 
Stern Odin, for young Balder's sake. 
Has dared the slumbering Vala wake. 
But love can pass o'er brier and stone 
Unharm'd. through floods and forests lone; 
Love can defy the treacherous arm 
Of spirits leagued to work its harm. 
Pierce the dread silence of the tomb. 
And smooth the way, and light the gloom. 

Whence art thou ? essence of delight ! 
Pure as the heavens, or dark as night ! 
Feeding the soul with fitful dreams, 
And ever blending the extremes 
Of joys so fearful, cares so sweet. 
That wo and bliss together meet ! 
Thy touch can make the lion mild. 
And the sweet ringdove fierce and wild. 
Thy breath can rouse the gentlest maid 
That e'er on couch of down was laid, 
Brace her soft limbs to meet the cold. 
And make her in the danger bold ; 
The breast, that heaves so lily-white, 
Defy the storms and brave the night, 
While the rude gales that toss her hair, 
Seem whispers of the tremulous air. 
And heaviest toils seem passing light, 
And every peril new delight. 

Oh, whose is that love-lighted eye ! 
What form is tiiat. slow gliding by 1 
Sweet Helga, risen from the bed 
Where sleepless lay thy virgin head. 
Thou darest explore that dread abyss, 
To learn what tides thee, wo or bliss ! 
Whether it stand by fate decreed 
That stern Angantyr's breast shall bleed, 
Or he to whom in secret turn'd 
Thy heart with gentle passion burn'd. 
He whom thy soul had learn'd to cherish, 
For thy dear sake untimely perish. 

The night was calm ; a pallid glow 
Stream'd o'er the wide extended snow. 



WILLIAM HERBERT. 



uy 



Which like a silvery mantle spread 

O'er copse, and dale, and mountain's head. 

Oh, who has witness'd near the pole 

The full-orb'd moon in glory roll ! 

More splendid shines her lustrous robe, 

And larger seems the radiant globe ; 

And that serene unnumher'd choir. 

That pave the heaven's blue arch with fire. 

Shoot through the night with brighter gleam, 

Like distant suns, their twinkling beam. 

While in the north its streamers play, 

Like mimic shafts of orient day ; 

The wondrous splendour, fiery red, 

Round half the welkin seems to spread, 

And flashes on the summits bleak 

Of snowy crag or ice-clad peak. 

Lending a feeble blush, to cheer 

The twilight of the waning year. 

The thoughtful eye undazzled there 

May pierce the liquid realms of air, 

And the rapt soul delitrhted gaze 

On countless worlds that round it blaze. 

No floating vapour dims the sight 

That dives through the blue vault of night, 

While distance yields to fancy's power, 

And rapture rules the silent hour. 

A calm so holy secm'd to brood 
O'er white-robed hill and frozen flood, 
A charm so solemn and so still. 
That sure, if e'er the sprites of ill 
Shrink from the face of nature, this 
Must be the hallow'd hour of bliss, 
When no dark elves or goblins rude 
Dare on the walks of man intrude. 

Pure as the night, at that calm hour, 
Yomig Helga left her virgin bower ; 
And trod unseen the lonely road 
To gloomy Hela's dire abode. 
The broken path and toilsome way 
Adown a sloping valley lay. 
Where soli<l rocks on either side 
Might have the hand of time defied ; 
But some convulsion of old earth 
Had given the narrow passage birth. 
Onward with labouring steps and slow 
The virgin pass'd, nor fear'd a foe. 
The 7noon threw gloriously bright 
On the gray stones her streaming light; 
Till now the valley wider grew, 
And the scene scowl'd with dreariest hue. 
From the steep crag a torrent pouring 
Dash'd headlong down, with fury roaring, 
Through frozen heaps that midway hung; 
And, where the beams their radiance flung. 
Columns of ice and massive stone 
Blending and undistinguish'd shone ; 
While each dark shade their forms between 
Lent deeper horror to the scene ; 
And gloomy pines, that far above 
Lean'd from the high and rocky cove, 
. With frozen spray their heads besprent 
Under the hoary burden bent. 
Before her spread a forest drear 
Of antique trees with foliage sere; 
Wreath'd and fantastic were their roots, 



And one way stretch'd their stunted shoots : 

Each hollow trunk some beast might hide, 

Or fiends more wily there abide. 

She seem'd in that strange wilderness 

A spirit sent to cheer and bless, 

A beauteous form of radiant light 

Charming the fearful brow of night. 

The wind, with a low whisper'd sigh, 

Came rushing through the branches dry; 

Heavy and mournful was the sound. 

And secm'd to sweep along the ground. 

The virgin's heart throbb'd high ; the blood 

Beat at its doors with hastier flood : 

But firm of purpose, on she pass'd, 

Nor heeded the low rustling blast. 

A mist hung o'er the barren ground. 

And soon she was all mantled round 

In a thick gloom, so dark and dread, 

That hardly wist she where to tread. 

Mute horror brooded o'er the heath. 

And all was dark and still as death : 

When sudden a loud gust of wind, 

Shaking the forest, roar'd behind. 

And wolves secm'd howling in the brake, 

And in her path the hissing snake. 

Then all was hush'd ; till swift and sheen 

A meteor flash'd upon the scene ; 

A hoarse laugh burst upon her ear, 

And then a hideous shriek of fear. 

Dire phantoms, in the gloom conceal'd, 

Were instant by that light reveal'd ; 

For, lurking sly, behind each tree 

Strange faces peep'd with spiteful glee. 

And ghastly forms and shapes obscene 

Glided the hoary rocks between. 

Oh, who shall save thee, Helga ! mark 

The ambush'd spirits of the dark ! 

Those are the powers accurs'd, that ride 

The blasting whirlwind, and preside 

O'er nature's wrecks; whose hands delight 

To weave the tempest of the night. 

Spread the red pestilence, and throw 

A deeper gloom o'er human wo ! 

Those are the fiends, that prompt the mind 

To deeds of darkness, and behind 

Send their fell crew with sickening breath, 

Despair, and infamy, and death! 

Nor yet unmoved the virgin gazed ; 
She trembled as that meteor blazed ; 
But high she spread her white arms sheen, 
And thus she pray'd to beauty's queen. 

" Immortal Freya ! if e'er my mind 
Has to thy gentle rites inclined ; 
If e'er my hand fresh garlands wove 
Of flowers, the symbols of chaste love. 
And cull'd from all its blooming hoards 
The sweets which opening spring aftbrds ; 
If I have knit the silken twine 
To deck thy pure and honour'd shrine; 
Immortal Freya. attend my prayer! 
To a lone virgin succour bear ! 
Give mc to reach great Vala's grave. 
And from the pov\ers of darkness save !" 

Fair Helga spoke ; and as she pray'd, 
A charm descended on the maid, 



r 
128 WILLIAM 


HERBERT. 


Like the sweet fall of measured sound. 


It ceased ; and straight a lurid flash 


Or dew distill'd on holy ground ; 


Burst through the gloom with thunder crash. 


And vanish'd seem'd the powers of ill, 


It lighted all death's dreary caves. 


And nature smiled serene and still. 


It glared on thousand thousand graves. 


The darksome mist was roH'd away, 


Hell's iron chambers rang withal. 


And tranquil, as the fall of day, 


And pale ghosts started at the call; 


A milder gloom imbrown'd the way ; 


While, as the gather'd tempest spreads, 


While through that wild and barren scene 


Rush'd the red terror o'er their heads. 


The lofty gates of hell were seen. 


And well I deem, those realms might show 


A strain delightful pouring slowly 


Unnumber'd shapes of various wo ; 


Breathed in soft cadence pure and holy : 


Lamenting forms, a ghastly crew, 


And the strange voice she long'd to hear 


By the strange gleam were given to view ; 


Stole gently on her wondering ear. 


And writhing agony was there. 


Hark ! the wild notes are sweetly swelling, 


And sullen motionless despair: 


Now upon things unearthly dwelling, 


Sights, that might freeze life's swelling tide, 


And now of time's old secrets telling. 


Blanch the warm cheek of throbbing pride. 


To rapture charm'd, fair Helga long 


And shake fair reason's frail defence, 


Stood listening that immortal song ; 


Though strongly nerved by innocence. 


But onward now she sprang with haste, 


Nor dared the bieathless virgin gaze 


And through hell's portals quickly paced. 


On hell's dread cells and devious ways ; 


Then, starting from his gory bed, 


Back rush'd unto her heart the blood. 


The whelp of Hela raised his head, 


And horror stay'd its curdling flood ; 


And, as he view'd the daring maid, 


As fainting nigh the gates of hell 


Gnash'd his keen fangs, and fiercely bay'd. 


In speechless trance young Helga fell. 


His glowing eyes with fury scowl'd, 


Her glowing lips are pale and cold ; 


And long and loud the monster howl'd: 


Her dainty limbs of heavenly mould. 


For well he mark'd athwart the gloom 


Fashion'd for bliss and form'd to rest 


A living form by Vala's tomb. 


On couch of down by love carest. 


But unap'pall'd the virgin stood. 


Lie by yon damp and mouldering tomb, 


And thus, in calm unalter'd mood : 


Faded, and stript of mortal bloom ; 


" By the force of Runic song. 


Like flowers on broken hawthorn bough, 


By the might of Odin strong. 


Or snow-wreaths on the mountain's brow. 


By the lance and glittering shield 


Shall e'er that bosom move again. 


Which the maids of slaughter wield, 


To know love's subtle bliss or pain 1 


By the gems whose wondrous light 


Shall e'er those languid beauties stirl 


Beams in Freya's necklace bright, 


Shall heaven's pure light revisit her? 


By the tomb of Balder bold, 


Or is she thus enveloped quite 


I adjure thine ashes cold. 


By curtain of eternal night? 


Vala, list a virgin's prayer ! 


And ye, who in life's varied scene 


Speak ! Hialmar's doom declare !" 


Still its frail joys and sorrows glean. 


She ceased ; when breathing sad and slow, 


Say, does her fate for pity cry. 


Like some unwilling sound of wo. 


Or were it best to sink and die. 


A sweetly solemn voice was sent 


While innocence is chaste and pure, 


Forth from that gloomy monument. 


And flattering fancies yet allure 


" Deep-bosom'd in the northern fells 


To leave the hopes of youth half-tasted, 


A pigmy race immortal dwells, 


To fly, before its dreams are blasted. 


Whose hands can forge the falchion well 


Its charms forcdone, its treasures wasted ; 


With many a wondrous mutter'd spell. 


Ere guilty bliss with secret smart 


If bold Hialmar's might can gain 


Has touch'd the yet untainted heart, 


1 A weapon from their lone domain, 


To shun the pleasure and the crime, 


Nor stone nor iron shall withstand 


Nor trust the wintry storms of time ? 


The dint of such a gifted brand ; 


True to the charge, some guardian power 


Its edge shall drink Angantyr's blood, 


Watch'd over Helga's deathlike hour ; 


And life's tide issue with the flood. 


Whether by pity moved and love 


Victorious, at night's silent hour, 


Bright Freya glided from above, 


The chief shall reach fair Helga's bower. 


Spread round her limbs a viewless spell. 


But thou, who darest with living tread 


And snatch'd her from the jaws of hell ; 


Invade these realms, where rest the dead; 


Or Odin's self reserved the fair 


Breaking the slumbers of the tomb 


For other woes and worse despair; 


With charms that rend hell's awful gloom ; 


For at the earliest dawn of day 


Who seek'st to scan, with prescience bold, 


In her still bower young Helga lay, 


What gods from mortal man withhold, 


And waked, as from a feverish dream. 


Soon shall thine heart despairing rue 


To hail the morning's orient beam. 


The hour that gave these shades to view, 




And Odin's wrath thy steps pursue." 


. 





WILLIAM HERBERT. 



129 



SOLITUDE. 

'TwERK sweet to lie on desert land, 
Or where some loae and barren strand 
Hears the Pacific waters roll, 
And views the stars of Southern pole ! 
'T were best to live where forests spread 
Beyond fell man's deceitful tread. 
Where hills on hills proud rising tower, 
And native groves each wild embower. 
Whose rocks but echo to the howl 
Of wandering beast or clang of fowl ! 
The eagle there may strike and slay ; 
The tiger spring upon his prey ; 
The cayman watch in sedgy pool 
The tribes that glide through waters cool ; 
The tender nestlings of the brake 
May feed the slily coiling snake : 
And the small worm or insect weak 
May quiver in the warbler's beak: 
All there at least their foes discern. 
And each his prey may seize in turn. 
But man, when passions fire the soul, 
And reason stoops to love's control. 
Deceitful deals the murderous blow 
Alike on trustiest friend or foe: 
And oft the venom'd hand of hate 
Points not the bitterest shaft of fate : 
But faithless friendship's secret fang 
Tears the f<)nd heart with keener pang, 
And love demented weaves a spell 
More dreadful than the pains of hell. 



FUTURITY. 

Sat, when the spirit fleets away 
From its frail house of mortal clay. 
When the cold limbs to earth return, 
Or rest in proudly sculptur'd urn. 
Does still oblivion quench the fire 
That warm'd the heart with chaste desire 1 
Do all our fond affections lie 
Buried in dark eternity? 
Or may the souls of those we love 
In darkness oft around us move. 
Drawn back by faithful thoughts to earth. 
Haunt the dear scenes that gave them birth, 
And still of former ties aware. 
Float on the gently sighing airl 
It may not be, a flame so bright 
Should ever sink in endless night ; 
And if, when fails the transient breath. 
The soul can spurn the bonds of death, 
Love's gentle spirit ne'er shall die, 
But dove-like with it mount the sky ! 
Oh, 'tis not sure the poet's dream. 
Sweet fancy's visionary theme. 
Where'er the fleeting soul shall go, 
Still will our pure affections glow. 
Though life's frail thoughts are past and vain. 
The sense of good must still remain, 
And death, that conquers all, shall ne'er 
From the delighted spirit tear 
The memory of a mother's care ! 
17 



That fond remembrance still shall cling 
In heaven to life's immortal spring ! 
And thou, whose bright and cherish'd form, 
Clasp'd to his heart with rapture warm, 
Oft wakes the humble poet's eye 
To more than mortal ecstasy, 
Whose blooming cherubs, fresh as May, 
In harmless sport around him play. 
Say, does he dream ! shall joy like this 
Pass as a shadowy scene of bliss 1 
Or, when that beauteous shape shall fade, 
And his cold tongue in dust be laid, 
Shall the fond spirits ever glow 
With love together link'd as now ? 
It is not false ! Love's subtle fire 
Shall live, though mortal limbs expire : 
E'en now from heaven's ethereal height 
Hialmar turns his wistful sight. 
To Sigtune's towers, vv'here, bathed in tears. 
Mid anxious hopes and throbbing fears, 
He sees the lovely mourner lie 
With pallid cheek and languid eye. 
Ne'er shall her bold victorious lord 
Return to breathe the blissful word ; 
By Samsoe's rocks his body lies. 
To love a bleeding sacrifice : 
And pensive there, though aid is vain. 
And past the poignant throb of pain, 
Friendship bends sadly to survey 
The unconscious form and lifeless clay. 



JEALOUSY. 

Four things the wise man knew not to declare, 
The eagle's path athwart the fields of air ; 
The ship's deep furrow thro' the ocean's spray ; 
The serpent's winding on the rock ; the way 
Of man with woman. Into water clear 
The jealous Indian rudely thrust his spear. 
And, quick withdrawing, pointed how the wave 
Subsided into stillness. The dark grave. 
Which knows all secrets, can alone reclaim 
The fatal doubt once cast on woman's fame. 
Night's shade fell thick ; the evening was far spent 
Ere proud Montalban to her chamber went. 
Slowly he entcr'd, and with cautious glance 
Cast his eye round, before he did advance; 
Then placed a bowl of liquor by her side. 
And thus severe address'd his sorrowing bride : 

"The night advances, Julia: hast thou pray'd 
To Him whose eye can pierce the thickest shade. 
Who, robed in truth, is never slow to mark 
The hidden guilty secrets of the darki" 

"Yes, honour'd Albert, I have duly learn'd 
That prayer is sorrow's balm," the wife return'd. 
" The voice of God is awful, when the breast 
Of the weak sufferer is by guilt oppress'd ; 
But mercy dawns upon the patient head, 
The peace of Him who for our failings bled." 

Her words some tender sympathy awoke, 
But he repress'd it, and thus sternly spoke. 
" If morning's dawn must glimmer on our bier. 
Say, canst thou meet the future without fear 1 



130 



WILLIAM HERBERT. 



Is thy soul chasten'd, and resign'd to go 
This night to everlasting bliss or wol" 

His accents falter'd ; but unmoved he stood, 
And, firm of heart, his beauteous victim view'd. 
He wore the ghastly aspect of the dead, 
But his lip quiver'd, and his eye was red ; 
And such dark feelings character'd his gaze, 
That Julia shrunk with terror and amaze. 
She paused ; her eye fell doubtful on that bowl ; 
O'er ail her frame a shuddering horror stole, [raise 
Then thus with downcast look ; (she dared not 
Her eye to meet again that fearful gaze:) 

"Yes, Albert, I have made my peace with Heaven, 
At whose pure shrine my secret thoughts are 

shriven. 
AVhene'er fate calls, this humble soul obeys; 
The tear of sorrow asks no fond delays. 
With tremulous hope the lingering heart may cling 
To life's blest vv'alks, illumed by pleasure's spring. 
Cold duty's path is not so blithely trod, 
Which leads the mournful spirit to its God." 

She spoke, half-timid, and presaging ill 
From his knit brow and look severely still. 
The thought of death came o'er her ; and the mind 
Disown'd her words, more fearful than resign'd. 
Love's secret influence heaved the conscious breast 
With fluttering pulse, that would not be at rest. 
Stern Albert mark'd the tremor of her brow, 
And the cheek's fitful colour come and go. 
His eye was big with anguish, a- it stray'd 
O'er all the charms, which her thin robe betray'd ; 
The perfect loveliness of that dear form 
In its full spring of beauty ripe and warm ; 
And never had she look'd so wondrous fair. 
So precious, so surpassing all compare, 
In blither hours, when innocent delight 
Flush'd her young cheek and sparkled in her sight, 
As languid, in that careless garb array'd. 
Half-lit by the pale lamp, half-hid in shade. 
He would have given health, life, eternity, 
The joys that fleet, the hopes that never die, 
Once more in tenderest rapture to have press'd 
That shape angelic to his troubled breast ; 
But pride forbade, and from each living charm 
Drew fiercer hate, which love could not disarm. 
Upon that form of beauty, now his bane, 
Pollution scem'd to have impress'd a stain. 
Awhile he paced the floor with heavy stride, 
Then gazed once more upon his sorrowing bride ; 
And, parting with his hands the glossy hair 
On the white forehead of the silent fiiir, 
liOok'd wistfully ; then, bending sad and slow, 
Fix'd one long kiss upon that brow of snow. 
It seem'd as if love's spirit' in his soul 
Was battling with his passion's fierce control. 
He sat before her ; on one hand reclined 
His face, v^-hich told the struggle of his mind ; 
The other held the bowl : she raised her head. 
As, slow his hand extending, thus he said: 

" Drink, Julia ; pledge me in this cup of peace ; 
Drink deep, and let thy tears of sorrow cease." 

Her eye was fix'd and motionless ; her cheek 
Had lost its changeful hue ; she did not speak. 
Her nerves seem'd numb'd, and icy horror press'd, 
Like a cold weight of lead, upon her breast. 



" Diink, Julia," spoke again that dreadful voice : 
" Drink, Julia, deep ; for thou hast now no choice." 

A fatal shiver seem'd to reach her soul, 
And her hand trembled, as it touch'd the bowl ; 
But duty's call prevail'd o'er shapeless dread ; 
She look'd with silent terror, and obey'd. 
I know not, whether it was fancy's power [hour. 
Which smote each conscious sense in that dread 
Or whether, dooni'd at mortal guilt to grieve, 
Thus his good angel sadly took his leave ; 
But he half-started, and in truth believed 
That a deep lengthen'd sob was faintly heaved, 
And some dark shuddering form behind him pass'd, 
Which o'er her shape its fearful shadow cast. 
Breathless he listen'd by his thoughts appall'd ; 
(The hour of mercy could not be recall'd,) 
Then to his lips in turn the draught applied, 
Which should in death unite him with his bride. 



THE MOTHER'S PLEA. 

"I STAND not here in judgment, haughty priest; 
Nature forbids. Against a mother's love. 
Against a wife's firm faith, there is no law. 
Not e'en to fellest nations gorged with flesh 
Of mangled captives. Whence should we adore 
Thy deity, who mew'd like one infirm, 
In that low fane, sends forth his ministers 
To deeds of pitiless rape ] Our God bestows 
Harvest and summer fruits, chaining the winds 
Which never lash our groves. Ye bend the knee 
To the carved crucifix in temples wrought 
By human hands ; ye lift the hymn of praise 
By torches' glare at noon day : but the God 
We serve, best honour'd by the glorious ray 
Of his great luminary, dwells not here 
Prison'd midst walls, frail work of mortal skill. 
We worship him abroad, under the vault 
Of his own heaven ; yon star-paved firmament, 
The wilderness, the flood, the wreathed clouds 
That float from those far mountains robed in mist, 
The summits unapproach'd, untouch'd by time. 
Snow-clad, are his ; too vast to be confined 
He fills his works. Bow ye the trembling knee 
To 3'our own idols and that murd'rous law 
Which bids you seize a mother's callow brood 
In hour of peace ! The Carib doth not this. 
The man-devouring Cabre ! Are ye slaves 
Unto the spirit of ill who wars with God, 
lolokiamo, the worst foe to man ? 
That, riving thus the hallow'd ties of life," 
Ye work his evil will, and mar the scheme 
Of Him beneficent, whose fostering care 
Amid these wilds is over all his works. 
If there be one great Being, who hears our prayer, 
When that sonorous trump, which but to view 
Were death to woman, through each leafy glade 
Ten leagues aloof sends forth the voice of praise, 
Oh, tremble at his wrath ! My little ones. 
If e'er, restored, ye reach your father's hut, 
Tell him I live but while the fervent hope 
Of freedom and reunion with my own 
Leaves life its worth. That lost I welcome death." 



WILLIAM HERBERT. 



131 



THE BATTLE FIELD. 

Slow struggling through the mist, that reck'd to 

heaven, 
Day dawn'd on Chalons' plain. Faintly it show'd 
Indistinct horror, and the ghastly form 
Of havoc lingering o'er its bloody work. 
Oh for the tongue that told how once the fiend 
Over immortal Athens from his wing 
Scatter'd disease and death ! and, worse than death, 
The living curse of sunder'd charities, 
Whereby the fount of feeling and love's pulse 
Was stay'd within through dread, and, when most 

lack'd, 
The hospitable mansion sternly closed 
Against a parent's prayer, while corses foul, 
On the barr'd threshold's edge lay uninhumed, 
Exhaling plague! Oh, for the voice of him, 
Who drew the turtain of Apocalypse, 
To man declaring things for man too high, 
That I may speak the horrors, which broke slow 
Upon the sight at dawn ! The ample field. 
Which, but short hours before was redolent 
With herbs and healthful odours, now uptorn 
By thousand hoofs, batter'd beneath the strength 
Of wheels and horse and man, a barren mass 
Of dark confusion seem'd; a trampled waste 
Without the blush of verdure, but with gore 
Distain'd, and steep'd in the cold dews of death. 
Thick strewn, and countless, as those winged tribes 
Which clamoring blacken all the grassy mead 
In sickly autumn, when the withcr'd leaves 
Drift on the moaning gale, lay swords and pikes. 
Bucklers, and broken cuirasses, and casques, 
Shower'd by the pelting battle, when it rush'd 
With such hoarse noise as does the foaming surge 
Upon some rocky ledge, where ^olus 
Bids foul winds blow. But not of arms alone 
Rent fragments, and the broken orb of shields 
Embossed with gold, and gorgeous housings lay 
Cumbering that fearful waste. The mind shrinks 

back 
From the thick scatter'd carnage, the dread heaps 
That late were living energy and youth, 
Hope emulous, and lofty daring; strength. 
Which raised again from that corrupting sod, 
Thro' Ardenne's desert unto utmost Rhine 
Might have spread culture ; thousands whose blithe 

voice 
Might yet have caroH'd to the breath of morn, 
Or joy'd the banquet, or with gifted hand 
Waked the ecstatic lyre, adorning still 
With rich diversity of active power 
Cottage or palace, the marmorean hall's 
Proud masonry, with Roman wealth o'erlaid, 
Or of Sarmatian hut the pastoral hearth. 
Abode of love, where fond remembrance now 
Looks sadly over hills and native dales 
For forms beloved in vain, which far away, 
Spurn'd by the grazed ox, shall heap the sod 
Of Chalons' glebe with undistinguish'd clay. 
Alas ! — If erst, on that unhallow'd eve 
When Ramah quaked with dread, the deep lament 
Of Rachel mourning for her babes appall'd 
Utmost Judea, and the holy banks 



Of Jordan unto Syria's frontier bounds. 
What ear, save Thine to whom all plaints arise, 
Might have abided the commingling wail 
Of matrons widow'd, and of maids that day 
Bereft of bridal hopes ! like those lorn men 
Hard by the rock of Rimmon, when the Lord 
Smote Benjamin in all his fenced towns, 
Virgin, and wife, and infant with the sword 
Utterly destroying ; and one oath restrain'd 
Each willing fair in Israel ; yet brides 
For these still b oom'd in Gilead, and, what time 
The vintage glow'd, in Shiloh danced with song 
Ripe for connubial joys. But whence for these 
Shall ravaged Europe light the nuptial torch. 
Whose hopes have wither'd as the herbs, that 

bloom'd 
Odorous yestermorn on Chalons' plain I 
There foes on foes, friends lay with icy cheek 
Pressing their maim'd companions. On that field 
The eye might trace all war's vicissitudes 
Impress'd in fatal characters ; the rush 
Headlong of flight, and thundering swift pursuit, 
Rescue and rally, and the struggling front 
Of hard contention. Strewn on every side 
Lay dead and dying, like the scatter'd seed 
Cast by the husbandman, with other thoughts 
Of unstain'd harvest; chariots overthrown. 
Shields cast behind, and wheels, and sever'd limbs, 
Rider and steed, and all the merciless shower 
Of arrows barb'd, strong shafts, and feather'd darts 
Wing'd with dismay. As when of Alpine snows 
The secret fount is open'd, and dread sprites, 
That dwell in those crystalline solitudes [moan, 
Have loosed the avalanche whose deep-thundering 
Predicting ruin, on his couch death-dooni'd 
The peasant hears ; waters on waters rush 
Uptearing all impediment, woods, rocks, 
Ice rifted from the deep crerulean glens, 
Herds striving with the stream, and bleating flocks. 
The dwellers of the dale, with all of life 
That made the cottage blithesome ; but ere long 
The floods o'erpass ; the ravaged valley lies 
Tranquil and mute in ruin. So confused 
In awful stillness lay the battle's wreck. 
Here heaps of slain, as by an eddy cast, [steel. 
And hands, which, stifl", still clench'd the ruddy 
Show'd rallied strength, and life sold dearly. There 
Equal and mingled havoc, where the tide 
Doubtful had paused whether to ebb or flow. 
Some prone were cast, some headlong, some supine ; 
Others yet strove with death. The sallow cheek 
Of the slain Avar press'd the mangled limbs 
Of yellow-hair'd Sicambrian, whose blue eyes 
Still swum in agony ; Gclonic steed 
Lay panting on the cicatrized form 
Of his grim lord, whose painted brow convulsed 
Seem'd a ferocious mockery. There, mix'd 
The Getic archer with the savage Hun, 
And Dacian lancers lay, and sturdy Goths 
Pierced by Sarmatian pike. There, once his pride 
The Sueve's long-flowing hair with gore besprent, 
And Alans stout, in Roman tunic clad. 
Some of apparel stripp'd by coward bands 
That vulture-like upon the skirts of war 
Ever hang merciless ; their naked forms 



132 



WILLIAM HERBERT. 



In death yet beauteous, though the eburnean limbs 
Blood had defiled. There some, whom thirst all 

night 
Had parch'd, too feeble from that fellowship 
To drag their fever'd heads, aroused at dawn 
From fearful dreaming to new hope and life, 
Die rifled by the hands whose help they crave. 
Others lie maim'd and torn, too strong to die, 
Imploring death. Oh, for some friendly aid 
To staunch their burning wounds and cool the lip 
Refresh'd with water from an unstain'd spring ! 
But that foul troop of plunderers unrestrain'd 
Ply their abhorred trade, of groan or prayer 
Heedless, destroying whom war's wrath had spared. 
Some, phrensied, crawl unto the brooli, which late 
Pellucid roll'd, now choked with slain, and swell'd 
With the heart's blood of thousands ; gore they quafl' 
For water, to allay the fatal thirst [God ! 

Which only death may quench. And this, great 
This is tliy field of glory and of joy 
To man, the noblest of created forms, 
In thy pure image moulded ! This the meed 
For which exalted natures toil and strive, 
Placed in such high preeminence, to be 
Thine own simiUtude, in glory next 
Thine incorporeal ministers! Long while 
Upon that loathly scene gazed Atlila 
Touch'd by no thought of sufferings. 



HYMN TO DEATH. 

What art thou, O relentless visitant, 
Who with an earlier or later call, 
Dost sunnnon every spirit that abides 
In this our fleshly tabernacle ! Death ! 
The end of worldly sorrowing and joy, 
That breakest short the fantasies of youth. 
The proud man's glory, and the lingering chain 
Of hopeless destitution ! The dark gate 
And entrance into that untrodden realm. 
Where we must all hereafter pass ! Art thou 
An evil or a boon 1 that some shrink back 
With shuddering horror from the dreaded range 
Of thine unmeasured empire, others plunge 
Unbidden, goaded by the sense of ill. 
Or weariness of being, into the abyss ! 
And should we call those blest who journey on 
Upon this motley theatre, through life 
Successful, unto the allotted term 
Of threescore years and ten, even so strong. 
That they exceed it? orthose, who are brought down 
Before their prime, and, like the winged tribes, 
Ephemeral, children of the vernal beam, 
Just flutter round the sweets of life and die 1 — 
An awful term thou art ; and still must be, 
To all who journey to that bourne, from whence 
Return is none, and from whose distant shore 
No rumor has come back of good or ill. 
Save to the faithful, and even they but view 
Obscurely things unknown and unconceived, 
And judge not even, by what sense the bliss, 
Which they imagine, shall hereafter be 
Enjoy'd or apprehended. And shall man 



Unbidden rush on that mysterious change, 

Which, whether he believe or mock the creed 

Of those wlio trust, awaits him, and must bring 

Or good, or evil, or annihilate 

The sense of being, and involve him quite 

In darkness upon which no dawn shall break! — 

Fearful and dreaded must thy bidding be 

To such as have no light within, vouchsafed 

From the Most High, no reason for their hope ; 

But go from this firm world, into the void 

Where no material body may reside, 

By fleshly cares polluted and unmeet 

For spiritual joy ; and ne'er have known. 

Or knowing, have behind them cast the love 

Of their Redeemer, who thine awful bonds, 

Grim Potentate, has broken, and made smooth 

The deathbed of the just through faith in Him. 

How oft, at midnight, have I fix'd my gaze 

Upon the blue unclouded firmament. 

With thousand spheres illumined, each perchance 

The powerful centre of revolving worlds ! 

Until, by strange excitement stirr'd, the mind 

Has long'd for dissolution, so it might bring 

Knowledge, for which the spirit is athirst, 

Open the darkling stores of hidden time. 

And show the marvel of eternal things. 

Which, in the bosom of immensity, 

Wheel round the God of Nature. Vain desire ! 

Illusive aspirations ! daring hope ! 

Worm that I am, who told me I should know 

More than is needful, or hereafter dive 

Into the counsel of the God of worlds 1 

Or ever, in the cycle unconceived 

Of wonderous eternity, arrive 

Beyond the narrow sphere, by Him assign'd 

To be my dwelling wheresoe'er? Enough 

To work in trembling my salvation here. 

Waiting thy summons, stern, mysterious Power, 

Who to thy silent realm hast call'd away 

All those whom nature twined around my breast 

In my fond infoncy, and left me here 

DeBuded of their love ! Whsre are ye gone, 

And shall we wake from the long sleep of death, 

To know each other, conscious of the ties 

That link'd our souls together, and draw down 

The secret dew-drop on my cheek, whene'er 

I turn unto the past ] or will the change 

That comes to all, renew the alter'd spirit 

To other thoughts, making the strife or love 

Of short mortality a shadow past. 

Equal illusion ? Father, whose strong mind 

Was my support, whose kindness as the spring 

Which never tarries ! Mother, of all forms 

That smiled upon my budding thoughts most dear ! 

Brothers ! and thou, mine only sister ! gone 

To the still grave, making the memory 

Of all my earliest time, a thing wiped out, 

Save from the glowing spot, which lives as fresh 

In my heart's core, as when we last in joy 

Were gather'd round the blithe paternal board ! 

Where are yel Must your kindred spirits sleep 

For many a thousand years, till by the trump 

Roused to new being ■? Will affections then 

Burn inwardly, or all our loves gone by 

Seem but a speck upon the roll of time, 



WILLIAM HERBERT. 



133 



Unworthy our regard 1 — This is too hard 
For mortals to unravel, nor has He 
Vouchsafed a clue to man, who hade us trust 
To Him our weakness, and we shall wake up 
After his likeness, and be satisfied. 



AETIUS THE UNBELIEVER. 

As he who sails aloof 
Upon the perilous Atlantic, vex'd 
By baffling gales, what time his gallant bark 
Or on the summit of some dark blue wave 
Storm-beaten rides, or plunges into the chasm 
From that tremendous altitude, and straight 
Lies in his trough becalm'd, as if the grave 
Had swallow'd her ; nathless undaunted sets 
His fix'd regard upon the starry vault. 
And notes the hour, and frequent calculates 
Distance and bearings, an«l with skill corrects 
The errors of his course. So darkling steer'd 
Aetius, through the shoals and fearful blasts 
Of his tempestuous time, but never found 
That anchorage, secure from every change 
Of fitful gales, that haven, which the just 
Alone inherit; for the sons of earth, 
Who, vex'd with vain disquietude, pursue 
Ambition's fatuous light, through miry pools 
That yawn for their destruction, stray foredoom'd 
Amid delusive shadows to their end. 
That certain hope, which shineth evermore 
A beacon to the righteous, over them 
Its peaceful radiance never shall diffuse ; 
And bitterness shall be the bread they chew, 
While striving to devour the portion snalch'd 
By strong injustice from their fellow men, 
A baneful meal ; and their satiety 
Shall be a curse, more fatal than the void 
Of meager famine, an unwholesome weight, 
That haply shall bring dreams beyond the grave 
To the charged soul, and phantoms of the things 
Which have been on this earth, and which shall be 
Hereafter, when the trumpet wakes the dead. 



WOMAN. 

Fairkst and loveliest of created things, 
By our great Author in the image form'd 
Of his celestial glory, and design'd 
To be man's solace ! Undefiled by sin 
How much dost thou exceed all earthly shapes 
Of beautiful, to charm the wistful eye. 
Bland to the touch, or precious in the use ! 
His treasure of delight, while the fresh prime 
Adorns his forehead with the joy of youth, 
His comfort in the winter of the soul ! 
Chaste woman ! thou art e'en a brighter gem 
To him, who wears thee, than e'er shone display'd 
Upon the monarch's diadem ; a charm 
More sweet to lull all sorrow, than the tint 
Of spring's young verdure in the devpy morn, 
Or music's mellow tones, which floating come 



Over the water like a fairy dream ! 

Thou hangest, as a wreath upon his neck, 

More fragrant than the rose, in thy pure garb 

Of blushing gentleness. Thou art a joy 

More sprightly than the lark in vernal suns 

Pouring his throat to heaven, or forest call 

By blithesome Dryads blown ; a faithful stay 

In all the world's mischances ; a helpmeet 

For man in sickness, and decay, and death. 

Thou art more precious than an only child 

In weary age begotten, a clear spring 

Amid the desert, an unhoped-for land 

To baffled mariners, or dawn of day 

To who has press'd all night a fever'd couch. 

Oh, wherefore, best desired and most beloved 

Of all heaven's works, oh, wherefore wert thou 

made 
To be our curse as well as blessing ! lured 
From thy first shape of innocence to become 
A thing abased by guilt, and more deform'd 
As thine original glory was more bright ! 



FAREWELL. 

Reader, whoe'er hast travell'd to the goal 
Through this long chant unwearied, if my verse, 
Tuned to no trivial strain, hast lent thee aught 
Of pleasure or of profit, o'er the work 
Wrought by the chaste artificer of song 
Bend kindly, yielding such small meed of praise 
Earn'd by high musing, as may send his name 
Not ill-esteem'd upon the wings of Time 
Unto his children's children, when the sod 
Shall lie upon the hand that gave it life, 
Calling the soul's unborn imaginings [forms 

From thought's deep fountain ; like the glowing 
Of Eros and his brother, who uprose 
From their wet cradle at the wizard's voice, 
This mournful, o'er his neck the jetty locks 
With hyacinthine ringlets clustering, 
That blythe and golden as the god of day. 

Perchance I shall not walk with thee again 
Along the Muse's haunt, and we shall both 
Be number'd with the countless things that lie 
O'ershadow'd by oblivion ; hearts that beat 
High in the noontide of ambitious hopes. 
And forms of loveliest symmetry, that once 
Delighted the beholder, by the hand, 
Which deals just measure unto all that tread 
This changeful world, o'ertaken in their dream 
Of summer joy. Calm reason throws a cloud 
O'er the enchantment of aspiring thoughts 
Which whisper of a life beyond the tomb 
Upon the lips of men, and tells how vain 
The shadow of such glory, nothing worth 
To him who hath his dwelling with the worm. 
But that Almighty will, which placed man here 
To labour in his calling, hath set deep 
Within his bosom an undying hope. 
An aspiration unto nobler ends 
Than he hath compass'd yet ; a stirring thirst 
For praise beyond the term that nature's law 
Has granted to his brief mortality, 
M 



134 



WILLIAM HERBERT. 



This, ever of the gloomy monitor 

Regardless, bids him peril much, to win 

The unsuhstantial fame, which unto him 

Shall be as if not being; a sweet strain 

Of soul-enrapturing music to the deaf, 

A scene of beauty and of light to eyes 

That lie in darkness, and by slumber seal'd 

Without the sense of vision. Strange, forsooth, 

Appear the workings of the mind of man, 

Which goad him to his loss. The promised boon 

Of that stupendous glory, which shall be 

Hereafter, and survive the wreck of worlds 

Unto the end of Time, wants substance now 

To wrestle with his sense of present good ; 

That which is lighter than a transient gleam 

Of sunshine or the shadow of a shade 

Reflected from a mirror, and, if gain'd, 

Can never be by any sense of his 

Enjoy'd or apprehended, the vain wish 

To float upon the memory of men 

After his term of being oft becomes 

A master passion, and for that one aim 

He barters all, that his Creator gave 

Of joy or solace in the vale of life. 

And that inheritance of perfect bliss 

Which might be his for ever. Then happy they 

Who in the airy building of a name, 

Have travell'd through the guiltless ways of peace 

Innocuous, and held the mind's calm eye 

Fix'd on a better star than those vague fires. 

Which, fatuous, tole man to the abyss. Time was, 

Nor will return, when poesy might rear 

A more perennial monument than brass, 

Towering above the age-worn edifice, 

Where loath'd corruption saith unto the worm, 

" Thou art my sister." The famed capitol 

No longer sees the silent virgin climb 

Its marble steps, lior does the pomp profane 

Of sacrificial pontiffs crowd its ways ; 

Yet still the chaplet blooms, wlierewith the muse 

Inwreathed the forehead of Venusium's bard 

Fragrant and fresh, while ages fling their dust 

Upon the crumbling djmes, with which he claira'd 

Coeval glory. But the boast that told 

Of sepulchres by magic verse uppiled. 

Which neither storms nor all consuming Time 

Should bring to nothingness, would perish now 

Even in the utterance. I have yet beheld 

But half an age, yet in that petty space 

Such giant forn>s of havoc and of change 

Have glided o'er the earth, that the mazed thought 

Dwells little on the past, but gazing forth, 

Like the Ebudan seer, with ravishment 

Strains after what shall be. The ear is cloy'd 

Unto satiety with honied strains 

That daily from the fount of Helicon 

Flow murmuring ; and that which is to-day 



Inshrined upon the lip of praise, shall be 

To-morrow a tale told, a shadow pass'd 

Into those regions where oblivion throws 

Over the bright creations of the mind 

A darkness as of death. Scared learning flies 

An age, which bubbling with unnumber'd tongues 

In quest of some new wonder hurries on, 

And hath no retrospect. Enough for me, 

That this my tuneful labour, short howe'er 

Its term of glory, hath iny solace been 

Through many a wintry hour, when icy chains 

Bound the froze champaign ; a sweet anodyne 

To inv^-ard cares, lulling the tremulous heart 

That throbs with high aspirings, and would fain 

Live unreproach'd upon the rolls of fame. 

Mindful of its Creator, who requires 

From each with usury the gifts He gave. 

And stirs by inborn thirst of good report 

Man to his noblest uses. To have walk'd 

No servile follower, nor vainly trick'd 

With meretricious gauds of modern song. 

Beneath Aovian umbrage never sere, 

Where Melesigenes and Maro sang, 

Where British Milton gave his country's lyre 

A voice from ancient days, hath been to me 

A charm illusive, a refreshing toil 

Year after year. My little bark, o'er which 

Long fashioning thy symmetry I hung. 

Now launch'd upon the ocean wide of Time, 

Whose winds are evil tongues, and passions roused 

Amidst the warring multitude its storms. 

Sore shall I miss thee ! like the child, first sent 

From the safe home, where fond parental cares 

Watch'd o'er his growing energies. Go forth 

Unto thy destinies, and fare unharm'd 

Adown the current, which may waft thee soon 

To that Lethean pool, where earthly toils 

Sink unregarded in forgetfulness ! 



WASHINGTON. 

A BETTF.Ti prize 
There is for man, a glory of this world 
Well worth the labour of the blessed, won 
By arduous deeds of righteousness, that bring 
Solace, or wisdom, or the deathless boon 
Of holy freedom to his fellow men, 
And praise to the Almighty. Such a wreath 
Encircled late the patriotic brows 
Of him, who, greater than the kings of earth, 
To young Atlantis in an upright cause 
Gave strength and liberty, and laid the stone 
Whereon shall rise, if so Jehovah will. 
An empire mightier than the vast domain 
Sway'd once by vicious Caesars. 



SIR HUMPHRY DAVY. 



Since Bacon, no man has exhibited so won- 
derful a combination of the hiohest powers of 
science with the faculties of the poet, as Sir 
Humphry Davy. Coleridge said to Mr. 
Poole, " Had not Davy been the first chemist, 
he probably would have been the first poet of 
his ag-e ;" and the " Consolations in Travel," 
and the notes and poems recently given to the 
world by his brother. Dr. John Davy, are suf- 
ficient to prove that that opinion was not ex- 
travagant. "Who that has read his sublime 
quatrains on the doctrine of Spinoza," says 
Lockhart, the soundest critic of our times, 
"can doubt that he might have united, if he 
had pleased, in some great didactic poem, the 
vigorous ratiocination of DavDENand the moral 
majesty of Wordsworth ?" Even taking his 
effusions as we find them, it would not be dif- 
ficult to vindicate their superiority to a vast 
deal of the most popular poetry of the age. 

The life and scientific career of Sir Hum- 
phry are so fully before the world in the 
biographies of Dr. Paris and Dr. Davy, that 
it is unnecessary here to do more than refer to 
a few dates. He was born at Penzance, on 
the shore of Mount's Bay, in Cornwall, the 
17th December, 1778. Hia faculties were de- 
veloped very early : he made rhymes and dis- 
played a fondness for drawing when scarcely 
five years old. In 1798, Dr. Beddoes con- 
ferred upon him the situation of superintendent 
of the Pneumatic Institution at Clifton, and 
he accordingly removed to that place. In 
1802, he was appointed professor of chemistry 
in the Royal Institution, London. From this 
post he retired upon his marriage, in 1812, with 
Mrs. Apreece. In the following year he went 
abroad, and remained there till 1815. In 1818, 
he made a second visit to the continent. Two 



years after, on the death of Sir Joseph Banks, 
he was elected President of the Royal Society. 
Towards the close of 1826, he experienced an 
attack of paralysis ; but so far recovered as to 
be able to undertake a journey to the conti- 
nent early in the next year. He died at Ge- 
neva, 29th May, 1829. His remains were 
deposited in the burying-ground of that city. 

The poetry now printed is a selection from 
the pieces published by his brother. It was 
written at various periods. Some of his poems 
appeared in 1799, in the Annual Anthology, an 
interesting miscellany, of which two of the 
volumes were edited by Southey, and the 
third by Tobin. One of these poems, "The 
Tempest," is printed below; it bears the date 
1796. The poem alluded to by Mr. Lock- 
hart, is that entitled " Written after Recovery 
from a dangerous Illness." 

There is a remark in one of Sir Humphry 
Davy's memorandum-books, exhibiting so sin- 
gular a coincidence, in feeling and perception, 
with one of Mr. Wordsworth's admired pas- 
sages, that it will probably interest the reader 
to see it extracted. — " To-day, for the first 
time in my life, I have had a distinct sympa- 
thy with nature. I was lying on the top of a 
rock to leeward ; the wind was high, and 
every thing in motion ; the branches of an 
oak tree were waving and murmuring to the 
breeze; yellow clouds, deepened by gray at 
the base, were rapidly floating over the west- 
ern hills; the whole sky was in motion; the 
yellow stream below was agitated by the 
breeze ; every thing was alive, and myself part 
of the series of visible impressions ; I should 
I have felt pain in tearing a leaf from one of the 
trees." The poem entitled " Nutting" will 
occur to every reader of Wordsworth. 



THE TEMPEST. 

Thk tempest has darken'd the face of the skies, 
The winds whistle wildly across the waste pl-.iin, 

The fiends of the whirlwind terrilic arise, [main. 
And mingle the clouds with the white foaming 

All dark is the night and all gloomy the shore, 
Save when the red lightnings the ether divide ; 

Then TdIIows the thunder witli loud sounding roar, 
And echoes in concert the billowv tide. 



But tho' now all is murky and shaded with gloom, 
Hope, the soother, soft whispers the tempest shall 
cease : 
Then nature again in her beauty shall bloom, 
And enainour'd embrace the fair, sweet-smiling 
peace. 

For the bright blushing morning, all rosy with light, 
Shall convey on her wings the creator of day ; 

He shall drive all the tempest and terrors of night, 
And nature, enliveu'd, again shall be gay. 

135 



136 



SIR HUMPHRY DAVY. 



Then the warblers of spring shall attune the soft lay, 
And again the bright floweret shall blush in the 
vale ; 
On the breast of the ocean the zephyr shall play, 
And the sunbeam shall sleep on the hill and the 
dale. 

If the tempest of nature so soon sink to rest ; 

If her once faded beauties so soon glow again ; 
Shall man be for ever by tempest oppress'd, — 

By the tempest of passion, of sorrow, and pain ? 

Ah, no ! for his passions and sorrows shall cease. 
When the troublesome fever of life shall be o'er: 

In the night of the grave he shall slumber in peace, 
And passion and sorrow shall vex him no more. 

And shall not this night, and its long dismal gloom. 
Like the night of the tempest again pass away T 

Yes ! the dust of the earth in bright beauty shall 
bloom. 
And rise to the morning of heavenly day. 



FONTAINEBLEAU. 

The mists disperse, — and where a sullen cloud 
Hung on the mountain's verge, the sun bursts forth 
In all its majesty of purple light. 
It is a winter's evening, and the year 
Is fast departing ; yet the hues of heaven 
Are bright as in the summer's warmest month. 
It is the season of the sleep of things ; 
But nature in her sleep is lovely still ! 
The trees display no green, no forms of life ; 
And yet a magic foliage clothes them round, — 
And purest crystals of pellucid ice. 
All purple in the sunset. Midst the wood 
Fantastically rise the towering clitls, 
That in another season had been white. 
But now, contrasted with the brilliant ice, 
Shine in aerial tints of purest blue ! 
The varied outline has a thousand charms ; 
Here rises high a venerable wood, 
Where oaks are seen with massy ice girt round, 
And birches pendent with their glittering arms, 
And graceful beeches clinging to the soil; 
There, massy forms exist of rocks alone, — 
Rising as if the work of human art, 
The pride of some great Paladin of old, 
In awful ruins. Nearer I behold 
The palace of a race of mighty kings ; 
But now another tenants. On these walls, 
Where erst the silver lily spread her leaves — 
The graceful symbol of a brilliant court — 
The golden eagle shines, the bird of prey, — 
Emblem of rapine and of lawless power: 
Such is the fitful change of human things: 
An empire rises, like a cloud in heaven, 
Red in the morning sun, spreading its tints 
Of golden hue along the feverish sky. 
And filling the horizon ; — soon its tmts 
Are darken'd, and it brings the tlionder-storm, — 
Lightning, and hail, and desolation comes ; 
But in destroying it dissolves, and falls 
Never to rise ! 



WRITTEN AFTER RECOVERY FROM 
A DANGEROUS ILLNESS. 

Lo ! o'er the earth the kindling spirits pour 
The flames of life that bounteous nature gives ; 

The limpid dew becomes the rosy flower, 

The insensate dust awakes, and moves, and lives. 

All speaks of change : the renovated forms 
Of long-forgotten things arise again ; 

The light of suns, the breath of angry storms, 
The everlasting motions of the main — 

These are but engines of the Eternal will. 
The One Intelligence, Vv'hose potent sway 

Has ever acted, and is acting still, 

Whilst stars, and worlds, and systems all obey ; 

Without whose power, the whole of mortal things 
Were dull, inert, an unharmonious band, 

Silent as are the harp's untuned strings 
Without the touches of the poet's hand 

A sacred spark created by His breath. 

The immortal mind of man His image bears; 

A spirit living 'midst the forms of death, 

Oppress'd but not subdued by mortal cares ; 

A germ, preparing in the winter's frost 

To rise, and bud, and blossom in the spring ; 

An unfledged eagle by the tempest toss'd. 
Unconscious of his future strength of wing ; 

The child of trial, to mortality 

And all its changeful influences given ; 

On the green earth decreed to move and die. 
And yet by such a fate prepared for heaven. 

Soon as it breathes, to feel the mother's form 
Of orbed beauty through its organs thrill. 

To press the limbs of life with rapture warm, 
And drink instinctive of a hving rill ; 

To view the skies with morning radiance bright. 
Majestic mingling with the ocean blue. 

Or bounded by green hills, or mountains white, 
Or peopled plains of rich and varied hue ; 

The nobler charms astonish'd to behold, 
Of living loveliness, — to see it move. 

Cast in expression's rich and varied mould, 
Awakening sympathy, compelling love ; 

The heavenly balm of mutual hope to taste. 
Soother of life, afl'ection's bliss to share ; 

Sweet as the stream amidst the desert waste, 
As the first blush of arctic daylight fair ; 

To mingle with its kindred, to descry 

The path of power ; in public life to shine ; 

To gain the voice of popularity, 
The idol of to-day, the man divine ; 

To govern others by an influence strong [main, 
As that high law which moves the murmuring 

Raising and carrying all its waves along. 

Beneath the fuU-orb'd moon's meridian reign ; 

To scan how transient is the breath of praise, 
A winter's zephyr trembling on the snow, 

ChiU'd as it moves; or, as the northern rays. 
First fading in the centre, whence they flow. 



SIR HUMPHRY DAVY. 



137 



To live in forests mingled with tlie whole 
Of natural forms, whose generations rise, 

In lovely change, in happy order roll. 

On land, in ocean, in the glittering skies ; 

Their harmony to trace; the Eternal cause 
To know in love, in reverence to adore; 

To bend beneath the inevitable laws. 

Sinking in death, its human strength no more ! 

Then, as awakening from a dream of pain. 
With joy its mortal feelings to resign ; 

Yet all its living essence to retain. 

The undying energy of strength divine ! 

To quit the burdens of its earthly days. 

To give to nature all her Iwrrow'd powers, — 

Ethereal fire to feed the solar rays. 

Ethereal dew to glad the earth with showers. 



ON THE DEATH OF LORD BYRON. 

COMPOSED AT WESTHILL, IN THE GREAT STORM, 1824.* 

GoxE is the bard, who, like a powerful spirit, 
A beautiful and fallen child of light. 
Of fiery seraph the aspiring peer. 
Seem fitted by his nature to inherit 
A wilder state than in the genial strife 
Of mighty elements is given our sphere, 
Fix'd in a stated round its course to run, 
A chained slave, around the master sun ! 

Of some great comet he might well have been 
The habitant, that through the mighty space 
Of kindling ether rolls ; now visithig 
Our glorious sun, by wondering myriads seen 
Of planetary beings ; then in race 
Vying with light in swiftness, like a king 
Of void and chaos, rising up on high 
Above the stars in awful majesty. 

Now passing near those high and hless'd abodes, 
Where beings of a nobler nature move 
In fields of purest light, where brightest rays 
Of glory shine — in power allied to gods, 
Whose minds in hope and in fruition prove 
That unconsuming and ethereal blaze 
Flowing from, returning to, eternal love. 

And such may be his fate! And if to bring 
His memory back, an earthly type were given, 
And I possess'd the artist's powerful hand, 
A genius with an eagle's powerful wing 
Should press the earth recumbent, looking on heaven 
With wistful eye; a broken lamp should stand 
Beside him, on the ground its naphtha flowing 
In the bright flame, o'er earthly ashes glowing. 



* It was (iiirine a storm thit ho expired. Mr. Gordon, 
in his adriiirahle History of the Oreek Revolution, re- 
cords it : " At six o'clock in the .ifternoon of Easter 
Monday, (April 19.) at the instant of an awful thunder- 
storm, Byron expired." 

18 



MONT BLANC. 

With joy I view thee, bathed in purple light. 
Whilst all around is dark ; with joy I see 
Thee rising from thy sea of pitchy clouds 
Into the middle heaven, — 
As if a temple to the Eternal raised 
By all the earth, framed of the pilb> 'd rock. 
And canopied with everlasting snow ! — 
That lovely river, rolling at my feet 
Its bright green waves, and winding 'midstthe rocks. 
Brown in their winter's foliage, gain'd from thee 
Its flood of waters; through a devious course. 
Though it has laved the fertile plains, and wasli'd 
The cities' walls, and mingled with the streams 
Of lowland origin, yet still preserves 
Its native character of mountain strength, — 
Its colour, and its motion. Such are those 
Amongst the generations of mankind [heaven. 
To whom the stream of thought descends from 
With all the force of reason and the power 
Of sacred genius. Through the world they pass 
Still uncorrupted, and on what they take 
From social life bestow a character 
Of dignity. Greater they become. 
But never lose their native purity. 



THE SYBIL'S TEMPLE.* 

Thy faith, O Roman ! was a natural faith, 
Well suited to an age in which the light 
InefHible gleam'd through obscuring clouds 
Of objects sensible, — not yet revealed 
In noontide brightness on the Syrian mount. 
For thee, the Eternal Majesty of heaven 
In all things lived and moved, — and to its power 
And attributes poetic fancy gave 
The forms of human beauty, strength, and grace. 
The Naiad murmur'd in the silver stream. 
The Dryad whisper'd in the nodding wood, 
(Her voice the music of the zephyr's breath ;) 
On the blue wave the sportive Nereid moved, 
Or blew her conch amidst the eclioing rocks. 
I wonder not, that, moved by such a faith, 
Thou raisedst the Sybil's temple in this vale, 
For such a scene was suited well to raise 
The mind to high devotion, — to create 
Those thoughts indefinite which seem above 
Our sense and reason, and the hallowed dream 
Prophetic. — In the sympathy sublime. 
With natural forms and sounds, the mind forgets 
Its present being, — images arise 
Which seem not earthly. — midst the awful rock? 
And caverns bursting with the living stream, — 
In force descending from the precipice, — 
Sparkling in sunshine, nurturing with dews 
A thousand odorous plants and fragrant flowers. 
In the sweet music of the vernal woods, 
From winged minstrels, and the louder sounds 
Of mountain storms, and thundering cataracts, 
The voice of inspiration well might come ! 

• Tivoli. 



138 



SIR HUMPHRY DAVY. 



A FRAGMENT. 

It is alone in solitude we feel 
And know what powers belong to us. 
By sympathy excited, and constrain'd 
By tedious ceremony in the world, 
Many whom we are fit to lead we follow ; 
And fools, and confident men, and those who think 
Themselves all knowing, from the littleness 
Of their own talents and the sphere they move in, 
Which is most little, — these do rule the world ; 
Even like the poet's dream of elder time 
The fabled Titans imaged to aspire 
Unto the infinitely distant heaven, 
Because they raised a pile of common stones, 
And higher stood than those around them. 

The great is ever 

Obscure, indefinite ; and knowledge still, 
The highest, the most distant, most sublime, 
Is like the stars composed of luminous points, 
But without visible image, or known distance. 
E'en with respect to human things and forms. 
We estimate and know them but in solitude. 
The eye of the worldly man is insect-like, 
Fit only for the near and single objects ; 
The true philosopher in distance sees them. 
And scans their forms, their bearings, and relations. 
To view a lovely landscape in its whole, 
We do not fix upon one cave or rock. 
Or woody hill, out of the mighty range 
Of the wide scenery, — we rather mount 
A lofty knoll to mark the varied whole, — 
The waters blue, the mountains gray and dim, 
The shaggy hills and the embattled cliffs, 
With their mysterious glens, awakening 
Imagination wild, — interminable ! 



THE EAGLES. 

The mighty birds still upward rose. 
In slow but constant and most steady flight. 
The young ones following ; and they would pause, 
As if to teach them how to bear the light. 
And keep the solar glory full in sight. 
So went they on till, from excess of pain, 
I could no longer bear the scorching rays; 
And when I looked again, they were not seen, 
liOst in the brightness of the solar blaze. 
Their memory left a t3'pe, and a desire : 
So should I wish towards the light to rise, 
Instructing younger spirits to aspire 
Where I could never reach amidst the skies. 
And joy below to see them lifted higher. 
Seeking the light of purest glory's prize. 
So would I look on splendour's brightest day 
With an undazzled eye, and steadily 
Soar upwards full in the immortal ray. 
Through the blue depths of the unbounded sky, 
Portraying wisdom's boundless purity. 
Before me still a lingering ray appears, 
But broken and prismatic, seen through tears. 
The light of joy and immortality. 



THE FIRE-FLIES. 

Aaxxs that lovely lamp from half its orb 
Sends forth a mellow lustre, that pervades 
The eastern sky, and meets the rosy light 
Of the last sunbeams dying in the west. 
The mountains all above are clear and bright, 
Their giant forms distinctly visible. 
Crested with shaggy chestnuts, or erect. 
Bearing the helmed pine, or raising high 
Their marble columns crown'd with grassy slopes. 
From rock to rock the foaming Lima pours 
P\ill from the thunder-storm, rapid, and strong, 
And turbid, Hush'd is the air in silence; 
The smoke moves upwards, and its curling waves 
Stand like a tree above. E'en in my heart. 
By sickness weaken'd and by sorrow chill'd, 
The balm of calmness seems to penetrate, — 
Mild, soothing, genial in its influence. 
Again I feel a freshness, and a power. 
As in my youthful days, and hopes and thoughts 
Heroical and high ! The wasted frame 
Soon in corporeal strength recruits itself. 
And wounds the deepest heal ; so in the mind, 
The dearth of objects and the loss of hope 
Are in the end succeeded by some births 
Of new creative faculties and powers. 
Brought forth with pain, but, like a vigorous child, 
Repaying by its beauty for the pang. 



LIFE. 



Our life is like a cloudy sky, midst mountains, 
When in the blast the watery vapours float. 
Now gleams of light pass o'er the lovely hills. 
And make the purple heath and russet bracken 
Seem lovelier, and the grass of brighter green; 
And now a giant shadow hides them all. 
And thus it is, that in all earthly distance 
On which the sight can fix, still fear and hope, 
Gloom and alternate sunshine, each succeeds. 
So of another and an unknown land 
We see the radiance of the clouds reflected. 
Which is the future life beyond the grave ! 



THOUGHT. 

Be this our trust, that ages (filled with light 
More glorious farthan those faint beams which shine 
In this our feeble twilight) yet to come 
Shall see distinctly what we now but hope, — 
The world immutable in which alone 
Wisdom is found, the light and life of things, 
The breath divine, creating power divine, 
The One of which the human intellect 
Is but a type, as feeble as that image' 
Of the bright sun seen on the bursting wave — 
Bright, but without distinctness ; yet in passing 
Showing its glorious and eternal source. 



JOHN HERMAN MERIVALE. 



John Herman Merivale was born in Exe- 
ter, on the fifth of August, 1779. He was edu- 
cated at Cambridge, studied law, was a suc- 
cessful barrister, and in 1S2G was appointed a 
Commissioner in Bankrujitcy. His "Poems, 
Original and Translated," were published by- 
Pickering, in three volumes, in March, 1844. 
The third volume comprises translations from 
Schiller, and appeared simultaneously with 
Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer's " Songs and 
Ballads of Schiller," to which it has been 
generally preferred by the critics. His versions 

ODE ON THE DELIVERANCE OF EU- 
ROPE, 1814. 

The hour of blood is past ; 

Blown the last trumpet's blast ; 
Peal'd the last thunders of the embattled line : 

From hostile shore to shore 

The bale-fires blaze no more ; 
But friendly beacons o'er the billows shine, 

To light, as to their common home, 
The barks of every port that cut the salt sea foai». 

" Peace to the nations !" — Peace ! 

Oh sound of glad release 
To millions in forgotten bondage lying ; 

In joyless exile thrown 

On shores remote, unknown, 
Where hope herself, if just sustain'd from dying, 

Yet sheds so dim and pale a light. 
As makes creation pall upon the sickening sight. 

" Peace ! Peace the world around !" 

Oh strange, yet welcome sound 
To myriads more that ne'er beheld her face ; 

And, if a doubtful fame 

Yet handed down her name 
In faded memory of an elder race, 

It seem'd some visionary form. 
Some Ariel, fancy-bred, to soothe the mimic storm. 

Now the time-honour'd few, 

Her earlier reign that knew, 
May turn their eyes back o'er that dreamy flood, 

And think again they stand 

On the remember'd land. 
Ere yet the sun had risen in clouds of blood, 

Ere launch'd the chance-directed bark 
On that vast world of ocean, measureless and dark. 

And is it all a dream 1 
And did tliose things but seem — 
The vain di-lusions of a troubled sight 1 
Or, if indceil tliey were. 
For what did nature bear 



from the Greek, Latin, Italian, and several 
other languages, are all remarkable for a strict 
fidelity, but his diction is frequently difficult 
and inharmonious. One of Mr. Merivale's 
earliest works was "The Minstrel, or the 
Progress of Genius," in continuation of Dr. 
Beattie, whose style he successfully imitated. 
The most perfect of his longer poems is " Or- 
lando in Roncesvalles," a story of the Italian 
school, suggested by the " Morgante Mag- 
giore" of Luigi Pulci. He died in London, 
on the fifth of April, 1844. 

The long dark horrors of that fearful night 1 
Only to breathe and be once more [shore ? 
Even as she was and breathed upon that former 

O'er this wild waste of time, 

This sea of blood and crime, 
Doth godlike virtue rear her awful form, 

Only to cheat the sight 

With wandering, barren light — 
The meteor, not the watch-fire, of the storm 1 

The warrior's deed, the poet's strain, [vain? 
The statesman's anxious toil, the patriot's sufferings, 

For this did Louis lay, 
In Gallia's sinful day. 
On the red altar his anointed head 1 
For this did Nelson pour. 
In Britain's glorious hour. 
More precious blood than Britain e'er had shed 1 
And did their winged thoughts aspire, 
Even in the parting soul's prophetic trance, no 
higher 1 

Ye tenants of the grave, 

Whom unseen wisdom gave 
To watch the shapeless mist o'er earth extending, 

Yet will'd to snatch away 

Before the appointed day 
Of light renew'd, and clouds and darkness ending, 

Oh might ye now permitted rise, [eyes ; 

Cast o'er this wondrous scene your unobstructed 

And say, thou, whose might, 

Bulwark of England's right, 
Stood forth, the might of Chatham's lordly son ; 

Thou " on whose burning tongue 

Truth, peace, and freedom hung," 
When freedom's ebbing sand almost had run ; 

To the dcliver'd world declare, 
Thateach hath seen fulfill'd his latest,earliest prayer. 



Rejoice, kings of the earth ! 
But with a temperate mirth ; 



139 



140 



JOHN HERMAN MERIVALE. 



The trophies ye liave won, the wreaths ye wear — 

Power with his red right hand, 

And empire's despot brand. 
Had ne'er achieved these proud rewards ye bear; 

But, in one general cause combined, [mind. 
- The people's vigorous arm, the monarcli's constant 

Yet that untired by toil, 
Unsway'd by lust of spoil, 
Unmoved by fear, or soft desire of rest. 
Ye kept your onward course 
With unremitted force, 
And to the distant goal united press'd ; 
The soldier's bed, the soldier's fare. 
His dangers, wants, and toils, alike resolved to share. 

And more — that when, at length. 
Exulting in your strength, 
In tyranny o'erthrown, and victory won, 
Before you lowly laid. 
Your dancing eyes survey 'd 
The prostrate form of humbled Babylon, 
Ye cried, " Enough !" — and at the word 
Vengeance put out her torch, and slaughter 
sheath'd his sword — 

Princes, be this your praise ! 

And ne'er in after days 
Let faction rude that spotless praise profane, 

Or dare with license bold 

The impious falsehood hold, 
ThatEurope's genuine kings have ceased to reign. 

And that a weak adulterate race, [place. 

Degenerate from their sires, pollutes high honour's 

Breathe, breathe again, ye f;ee. 

The air of liberty, 
The native air of wisdom, virtue, joy ! 

And, might ye know to keep 

The golden wealth ye reap. 
Not thrice ten years of terror and annoy, 

Of mad destructive anarchy. 
And pitiless oppression, were a price too high. 

Vaulting ambition ! 

Thy bloody laurels torn. 
And ravish'd from thy grasp the sin-bought prize; 

Or, if thjj^ meteor fame 

Still win the world's acclaim. 
Let it behold thee now with alter'd eyes, 

And pass, but with a pitying smile. 
The hope-abandon'd chief of Elba's lonely isle. 



FROM RUFINUS. 

This garland intertwined with fragrant flowers, 
Pluck'd by my hand, to thee, my love, I send, 
Pale lilies here with blushing roses blend ; 

Anemone, besprent with April showers; 

Lovelorn Narcissus ; violet that pours 

From every purple cup the glad perfume ; 
And, while upon thy sweeter breast they bloom. 

Yield to the voice of love thy passing hours ! 

For thou, like these, wilt fade at nature's doom. 



THE PURSUIT OF LEARNING. 

Wuoso with patient and inquiring mind 
Would seek the stream of science to ascend, 
Must count the cost, and never hope to find 
Rest to his feet, or to his wanderings end. 
The faithless road doth ever onward tend. 
And clouds and darkness are its utmost bound: 
The sacred fount no human eye hath kenn'd, 
Though many a wight, beguiled by sight or sound, 
" Evpyjxa !" may exclaim ; " I — I the place have 
found." 

And, sooth to tell, it is a pleasant way 
Through sweet variety of lawn and wood. 
Mountain and vale, green pasture, forest gray 
And peopled town, and silent solitude ; 
And many a point, at distance dimly view'd, 
For idle loiterers an unmeasured height, 
By persevering energy subdued. 
Rewards the bold adventurer with a sight 
Of undiscover'd worlds — vast regions of delight. 



ANSWER TO A CHARGE OF INCON- 
STANCY. 

On not that I am faithless say 

Or that my love's no more the same, 
If Cynthia once inspired my lay, 

And then Licymnia lit the flame 
One goddess only I adore. 

Although in different forms I woo her ; 
Nor, though she bid me love no more. 

Could I be e'er inconstant to her. 

The sailor, midst the dangerous main. 

Full many a lovely region sees, 
Fair islands, bright with golden grain. 

And rich with ever-blooming trees ; 
But. till the destined port he gains, 

Those transient charms he little prizes, 
And quits with joy the happiest plains 

Soon as a favouring gale arises. 

My fancy had a mistress drawn. 

And stamp'd her image on my heart ; 
I roved o'er hill and vale and lawn, 

But ne'er could find the counterpart : 
This had the form, the air, the face, 

That, the sweet smile's bewitching beauty, 
And every singly winning grace 

Fix'd for the time my wandering duty. 

But now 'tis sped — my fancy's flight : 

All former trivial, vain desires, 
Like spectres fade before the light, 

Or perish in sublimer fires. 
He needs not fear again to fall 

Before the shadow of perfection. 
Who for the bright original 

Has dared avow his soul's election. 



HORACE SMITH. 



Mr. Smith was born about the year 1780, 
in London, where his father was an eminent 
solicitor. In 1812 he and his elder brother, 
Mr. JaiMes Smith, wrote their celebrated 
" Rejected Addresses," a work which has 
passed through twenty-five editions, and 
which is now, after the lapse of more than 
thirty years, hardly less popular than on its 
first a])pearance. They soon afterward pub- 
lished " Horace in London," parts of which 
had appeared in the " Monthly Mirror," and 
in 1813 the subject of this notice produced 
a successful comedy entitled " First Impres- 
sions," and subsequently "The Runaway," 
" Trevenion or Matrimonial Errors," " Bram- 
bletye House," "Tor Hill," "Reuben Aps- 
ley," and several other novels, some of which 
were deemed not unworthy of the author of 
" VVaverly." In 1840 he published an edition 
of the Miscellaneous Writings of his brother 



.Iames, who died in the sixty-fifth year of his 
age, in 1839 ; and in 1842 his last work, 
" Adam Brown, the Merchant." 

Mr. Smith is one of the most voluminous 
and popular writers of the nineteenth century. 
1 have seen no separate collection of his 
poems, but his imitations in the " Rejected 
Addresses," his parodies of Horace, and his 
lyrical contributions to the literary magazines, 
show him to be not only an admirable versifier, 
but a possessor of the sense of beauty and a 
most poetical fancy. His powers are versa- 
tile, and he has shown himself able to master 
any style with which he has chosen to grap- 
ple. His works have uniformly been success- 
ful, and the reader of his " Hymn to the 
Flowers," and other pieces in this volume, 
will not doubt that if he had devoted attention 
to poetry, he would have won an enduring and 
enviable reputation as a poet. 



HYMN TO THE FLOWERS. 

Day-stars ! that ope your eyes with man, to 
twinkle 
From rainbow galaxies of earth's creation, 
And dew-drops on her holy altars sprinkle 
As a libation. 

Ye matin worshippers ! who bending; lowly 
Before the uprisen sun, God's lidless eye I 
Throw from your chalices a sweet and holy 
Incense on high. 

Ye bright Mosaics ! that with storied beauty 

The floor of nature's temple tesselate 
With numerous emblems of instructive duty, 
Your forms create. 

Neath cloister'd boughs, each floral bell that 
svvingeth. 
And tolls its perfume on the passing air, 
Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth 
A call to prayer. 

Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column 

Attest the feel)leness of mortal hand, 
But to that fine, most catholic and solemn, 
Which God hath plann'd ; 

To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder, 
Wliose quenchless lamps the sun and moon sup- 

ply ; 



Its choir the winds and waves — its organ thunder — 
Its dome the sky. 

There, as in solitude and shade I wander [sod. 
Through the green aisles, or stretch'd upon the 
Awed by the silence, reverently ponder 
The ways of God. 

Your voiceless lips, flowers ! are living preachers, 

Each cup a pulpit, and each leaf a book, 
Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers 
From loneliest nook. 

Floral apostles ! that in dewy splendour, 

" Weep without wo, and l)lush without a crime," 
Oh may I deeply learn, and ne'er surrender 
Your lore sublime ! 

"Thou wert not, Solomon ! in all thy glory, 

Array'd," the lilies cry, "in robes like ours ; 
How vain j'our grandeur ! ah, how transitory, 
Are human flowers !" 

In the sweet scented pictures, heavenly Artist! 
With which thou paintest nature's wide-spread 
hall. 
What a delightful lesson thou impartcst 
Of love to all ! 

Not useless are ye, flowers ! though made for 
pleasure, 
Blooming o'er field and wave by day and night, 
From every source your sanction bids me treasure 
Harmless delight. 

141 



142 



HORACE SMITH. 



Ephemeral sages ! what instructors hoary* 

For such a world of thought could furnish scope? 
Each fading calyx a memento mori, 
Yet fount of hope. 

Posthumous glories ! angel-like collection ! 

Upraised from seed or bulb interr'd in earth, 
Ye are to me a type of resurrection, 
A second birth. 

Were I, O God ! in churchless lands remaining, 

Far from all voice of teachers or divines, 
My soul would find in flowers of thy ordaining. 
Priests, sermons, shrines ! 



THE HEAD OF MEMNON. 

In Egypt's centre, when the world was young. 
My statue soar'd aloft, — a man-shaped tower. 

O'er hundred-gated Thebes, by Homer sung. 
And built by Apis' and Osiris' power. 

When the sun's infant eye more brightly blazed, 
I mark'd the labours of unwearied time ; 

And saw, by patient centuries up-raised. 
Stupendous temples, obelisks sublime ! 

Hewn from the rooted rock, some mightier mound. 
Some new colossus more enormous springs. 

So vast, so firm, that, as I gazed around, 
I thought them, like myself, eternal things. 

Then did I mark in sacerdotal state, 

Psammis the king, whose alabaster tomb, 

(Such the inscrutable decrees of fate,) 

Now floats athwart the sea to share my doom. 

Thebes, I cried, thou wonder of the world ! 

Still shalt thou soar, its everlasting boast ; 
When lo ! the Persian standards were unfurl'd. 

And fierce Cambyses led the invading host. 

Where from the east a cloud of dust proceeds, 
A thousand banner'd suns at once appear ; 

Nought else was seen ; — but sound of neighing 
steeds, 
And faint barbaric music met mine ear. 

Onward they march, and foremost I descried, 
A cuirassed Grecian band, in phalanx dense. 

Around them throng'd, in oriental pride, 
Commingled tribes — a wild magnificence. 

Dogs, cats, and monkeys in their van they show, 
Which Egypt's children worship and obey ; 

They fear to strike a sacrilegious blow. 
And fall — a pious, unresisting prey. 

Then, havoc leaguing with infuriate zeal, 
Palaces, temples, cities are o'erthrown ; 

Apis is stabb'd ! — Cambyses thrusts the steel, 
And shuddering Egypt heaved a general groan ! 

The firm Memnonium mock'd their feeble power. 
Flames round its granite columns hiss'd in vain. 

The head of Isis, frowning o'er each tower, 
Look'd down with indestructible disdain. 



Mine was a deeper and more quick disgrace : — 
Beneath my shade a wondering army flock'd ; 

With force combined, they wrench'd me from my 
base, 
And earth beneath the dread concussion rock'd. 

Nile from his banks receded with affright. 

The startled Sphinx long trembled at the sound ; 

While from each pyramid's astounded height. 
The loosen'd stones slid rattling to the ground. 

I watch'd, as in the dust supine I lav, 

The fall of Thebes,— as I had mark'd its fame,— 

Till crumbling down, as ages roll'd away. 
Its site a lonely wilderness became ! 

The throngs that choked its hundred gates of yore. 
Its fleets, its armies, were no longer seen ; 

Its priesthood's pomp, its Pharaohs were no more, — 
All — all were gone — as if they ne'er had been ! 

Deep was the silence now, unless some vast 
And time-worn fragment thunder'd to its base; 

Whose sullen echoes, o'er the desert cast. 
Died in the distant solitude of space. 

Or haply, in the palaces of kings, 

Some stray jackal sate howling on the throne : 
Or, on the temple's holiest altar, springs 

Some gaunt hysena, laughing all alone. 

Nature o'erwhelms the relics left by time ; — 
By slow degrees entombing all the land ; 

She buries every monument sublime. 

Beneath a mighty winding-sheet of sand. 

Vain is each monarch's unremitting pains, 
Who in the rock his place of burial delves; 

Behold ! their proudest palaces and fanes 
Are subterraneous sepulchres themselves. 

Twenty-three centuries unmoved I lay. 
And saw the tide of sand around me rise; 

Quickly it threaten'd to engulf its prey. 
And close in everlasting night mine eyes. 

Snatch'd in this crisis from my yawning grave, 
Belzoni roU'd me to the banks of Nile, 

And slowly heaving o'er the western wave, 
This massy fragment reach'd the imperial isle. 

In London, now with face erect I gaze 

On England's pallid sons, whose eyes upcast, 

View my colossal features with amaze. 
And deeply ponder on my glories past. 

But who my future destiny shall guess 1 

Saint Paul's may lie, like Memnon's temple, low ; 

London, like Thebes, may be a wilderness, 

And Thames, like Nile, through silent ruins flow. 

Then haply may my travels be renew'd : — 
Some transatlantic hand may break my rest. 

And bear me from Augusta's solitude. 
To some new seat of empire in the west. 

Mortal ! since human grandeur ends in dust. 
And proudest piles must crumble to decay ; 

Build up the tower of thy final trust [away ! 

In those blest realms — where naught shall pass 



HORACE SMITH. 



143 



MORAL RUINS. 

Asia's rock-hollow'd fanes, first-horn of time, 
In sculpture's prime, 

Wroug-ht by the ceaseless toil of many a race, 
Whom none may trace. 

Have crumbled back to wastes of ragged stone, 

And formless caverns, desolate and lone. 

Egypt's stern temples, whose colossal mound, 
Sphinx-guarded, frown'd 

From brows of granite challenges to fate 
And human hate. 

Are giant ruins in a desert land, 

Or sunk to sculptured quarries in the sand. 

The marble miracles of Greece and Rome, 
Temple and dome. 

Art's masterpieces, awful in th' excess 
Of loveliness, 

Hallow'd by statued gods which might be thought 

To be themselves by the celestials wrought, — 

Where are they now I — their majesty august. 

Grovels in dust, 
Time on their altars prone their ruins flings 

As otlerings 
Forming a lair whence ominous bird and brute 
Their wailful misereres howl and hoot. 

Down from its height the Druid's sacred stone. 
In sport is thrown. 

And many a Christian fane have change and hate 
Made desolate, 

Prostrating saint, apostle, statue, bust. 

With Pagan deities to mingle dust. 

On these drear sepulchres of buried days 
'T is sad to gaze ; 

Yet, since their substances were perishable, 
And hands unstable 

Uprear'd their piles, no wonder that decay 

Both man and monument should sweep away. 

Ah me ! how much more sadden'd is my mood. 
How heart-subdued, 

The ruins and the wrecks when I behold. 
By time unroll'd, 

Of all the faiths that mau hath ever known, 

World-worshipp'd once — now spurn'd and over- 
thrown ! 

Religions — from the soul deriving breath. 

Should know no death. 

Yet do they perish, mingling their remains 
With fallen fanes. 

Creeds, canons, dogmas, councils, are the wreck'd 

And mouldering masonry of intellect. 

Apis, Osiris, paramount of yore, 

On Egypt's shore, 
A^oden and Thor, through the wide north adored, 
With blood outworn ; 

.love, and the multiform divinities. 

To whom the Pagan nations bent their knees, — 



Lol 



they are cast aside, dethroned, forlorn, 
Defaced, outworn. 



Like tke world's childish dolls, which but insult 

Its age adult. 
Or prostrate scarecrows, on whose rags we tread, 
With scorn proportion'd to our former dread. 

Alas, for human reason ! all is change. 

Ceaseless and strange, 

All ages form new systems, leaving heirs 
To cancel theirs ; 

The future will but imitate the past. 

And instability alone will last. 

Is there no compass, then, by which to steer 
This erring sphere? 

No tie that may indissolubly bind 

To God, mankind ! 

No code that may defy time's sharpest tooth 1 

No fix'd, immutable, unerring truth 1 

There is ! there is ! One primitive and sure. 

Religion pure. 
Unchanged in spirit, though its forms and codes 

Wear myriad modes, 
Contains all creeds within its mighty span — 
The love of God, displai/'d in love of man. 

This is the Christian's faith, when rightly read : 
Oh ! may it spread 

Till earth, redeem'd from every hateful leaven, 
Makes peace with heaven ; 

Below, one blessed brotherhood of love, 

One Father — worshipp'd with one voice — above ! 



ADDRESS TO AN EGYPTIAN MUxMMY. 

AxD thou hast walk'd about — how strange a 
story ! — 

In Thebes's streets, three thousand years ago ! 
When the Memnonium was in all its glory. 

And time had not begun to overthrow 
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous, 
Of which the very ruins are tremendous ! 

Speak ! — for thou long enough hast acted dummy. 
Thou hast a tongue, — come — let us hear its tune! 

Thou 'rt standing on thy legs, above-ground, 
mummy ! 
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon, — 

Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures. 

But with thy bones, and flesh,and limbs and features! 

Tell us — for doubtless thou canst recollect, — 
To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame? — 

Was Cheops, or Cephrenes architect 

Of either pyramid that bears his name ? — 

Is Pompcy's pillar really a misnomer ? — 

Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer? 

Perhaps thou wcrt a mason, — and forbidden. 
By oath, to tell the mysteries of thy trade : 

Then say, what secret melody was hidden 

In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise play'd ? 

Perhaps thou wert a priest; — if so, my struggles 

Are vain, — for priestcraft never owns its juggles ! 



144 



HORACE SMITH. 



Perchance that very hand, now pinion'd flat, 
Hath hob-a-nobb'd with Pharaoh, glass to glass, — 

Or dropp'd a halfpenny in Homer's hat, — 

Or doff 'd thine own, to let Queen Dido pass, — 

Or held, by Solomon's own invitation, 

A torch, at the great temple's dedication ! 

I need not ask thee if that hand, when arm'd. 
Has any Roman soldier maul'd and knuckled ] 

For thou wert dead, and buried, and emhahn'd. 
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled : — 

Antiquity appears to have begun 

Long after thy primeval race was run. 

Thou couldst develope, if that wither'd tongue 
Might tell us what those sightless orbs have seen. 

How the world look'd when it was fresh and young, 
And the great deluge still had left it green ! — 

Or was it then so old that history's pages 

Contain'd no record of its early ages 1 

Still silent! — Incommunicative elf! 

Art sworn to secrecy] Then keep thy vows ! 
But, prithee, tell us something of thyself, — 

Reveal the secrets of thy prison-house : — 
Since in the world of spirits thou hast sluraber'd. 
What hast thou seen — what strange adventures 
number'd 1 

Since first thy form was in this box extended, 
We have, above-ground, seen some strange mu- 
tations ; 
The Roman empire has begun and ended, — 
New worlds have risen, — we have lost old 
nations, — 
And countless kings have into dust been humbled. 
While not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled. 

Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head, 
When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses, 

March'd armies o'er thy tomb, with thundering tread, 
O'erthrew Osiris, Oriis, Apis, Isis, — 

And shook the pyramids with fear and wonder, 

When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder 1 

If the tomb's secrets may not be confess'd, 
The nature of thy private life unfold ! 

A heart hath throbb'd beneath that leathern breast, 
And tears adown that dusty cheek have roll'd : — 

Have children climb'd those knees, and kiss'd that 
face ] 

What was thy name and station, age and race ] 

Statue of flesh ! — Immortal of the dead ! 

Imperishable type of evanescence ! 
Posthumous man, — who quitt'st thy narrow bed. 

And standest undecay'd within our presence ! 
Thou wilt hear nothing till the judgment morning, 
When the great trump shall thrill thee with its 
warning ! 

Why should this worthless tegument endure. 
If its undying guest be lost for ever "! 

Oh ! let us keep the soul embalm'd and pure 
In living virtue, — that when both must sever. 

Although corruption may our frame consume, 

The immortal spirit in the skies may bloom ! 



TO THE ALABASTER SARCOPHAGUS, 

DEPOSITED IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 

Thou alabaster relic ! while I hold 

My hand upon thy sculptured margin thrown, 
Let me recall the scenes thou couldst unfold, 

Might'st thou relate the changes thou hast known ; 
For thou wert primitive in thy formation, 
Launch'd from the Almighty's hand at the creation. 

Yes — thou wert present when the stars and skies 
And worlds unnumber'd roll'd into their places ; 

When God from chaos bade the spheres arise, 
And fix'd the blazing sun upon its basis. 

And with his finger on the bounds of space 

Mark'd out each planet's everlasting race. 

How many thousand ages from thy birth 

Thou slept'st in darkness it were vain to ask, 

Till Egypt's sons upheaved thee from the earth, 
And year by year pursued their patient task. 

Till thou wert carved and decorated thus, 

Worthy to be a king's' sarcophagus ! 

What time Elijah to the skies ascended, 
Or David reign'd in holy Palestine, 

Some ancient Theban monarch was extended 
Beneath the lid of this emblazon'd shrine. 

And to that subterraneous palace borne. 

Which toiling ages in the rock had worn. 

Thebes, from her hundred portals, fill'd the plain. 
To see the car on which thou wert upheld ; 

What funeral pomps extended in thy train, 

What banners waved, what mighty music swell'd. 

As armies, priests, and crowds bewail'd in chorus. 

Their King — their God — their Serapis — their Orus! 

Thus to thy second quarry did they trust 
Thee, and the lord of all the nations round. 

Grim king of silence ! monarch of the dust ! 
Embalm'd, anointed, jewel'd, scepter'd, crown'd. 

Here did he lie in state, cold, stiff, and stark, 

A leathern Pharaoh grinning in the dark. 

Thus ages roll'd ; but their dissolving breath 
Could only blacken that imprison'd thing. 

Which wore a ghastly royalty in death, 
As if it struggled still to be a king; 

And each dissolving century, like the last. 

Just dropp'd its dust upon thy lid, and pass'd. 

The Persian conqueror o'er Egypt pour'd 
His devastating host — a motley crew ; 

The steel-clad horseman, — the barbarian horde, — 
Music and men of every sound and hue, — 

Priests, archers, eunuchs, concubines, and brutes, — 

Gongs, trumpets, cymbals, dulcimers, and lutes. 

Then did the fierce Cambyses tear away 

The ponderous rock that seal'd the sacred tomb ; 

Then did the slowly penetrating ray 

Redeem thee from long centuries of gloom. 

And lower'd torches flash'd against thy side. 

As Asia's king thy blazon'd trophies eyed. 



HORACE SMITH. 



145 



Plack'd from his grave, with sacrilegious taunt, 
The features of tlie royal corse they scann'd ; 

Dashing the diadem from his temple gaunt. 

They tore the sceptre from his graspless hand; 

And on those fields, where once his will was law, 

Left him for winds to waste and beasts to gnaw. 

Some pious Thebans, when the storm was past, 
Upclosed the sepulchre with cunning skill, 

And nature, aiding their devotion, cast 
Over its entrance a concealing rill ; 

Then thy third darkness came, and thou didst sleep 

Twenty-three centuries in silence deep. 

But he from whom nor pyramids nor sphynx 
Can hide its secrecies, Belzoni came ; 

From the tomb's mouth unlink'd the granite links. 
Gave thee again to light, and life, and fame, 

And brought thee from tlie sands and deserts forth, 

To charm the pallid children of the north ! 

Thou art in London, which, when thou wert new, 
Was what Thebes is, a wilderness and waste, 

Where sa'vage beast more savage men pursue ; 
A scene by nature cursed, by man disgraced. 

Now — 'tis the world's metropolis ! The high 

Queen of arms, learning, arts, and luxury ! 

Here, where I hold my hand, 'tis strange to think 
What other hands, [lerchance, preceded mine ; 

Others have also stood l)eside thy brink, 
And vainly conn'd the moralizing line ! 

Kings, sages, chiefs, that touch'd this stone, like me. 

Where are ye now ] — Where ail must shortly be. 

All is mutation ; — he within this stone 

Was once the greatest monarch of the hour. 

His bones are dust, his very name unknown ! — 
Go, learn from him the vanity of power; 

Seek not the frame's corruption to control, 

But build a lasting mansion for thy soul. 



MORAL ALCHEMY. 

The toils of alchemists, whose vain pursuit 

Sought to transmute 
Dross into gold, their secrets and their store 

Of mystic lore, 
What to the jibing modern do they seem 1 
An ignis fatuus chace, a fantasy, a dream ! 

Yet for enlighten'd moral alchemists, 

There still exists 
A philosophic stone, whose magic spell 

No tongue may tell. 
Which renovates the soul's decaying health. 
And what it touches turns to purest mental wealth. 

This secret is reveal'd in every trace 

Of nature's face, 
Whose seeming frown invariably tends 

To smiling ends 
Transmuting ills into their opposite, 
And all that shocks the sense to subsequent delight. 

Seems earth unlovely in her robe of snow 1 
Then look below, 
19 



Where nature in her subterranean ark, 

Silent and dark. 
Already has each floral germ unfurl'd, [world. 
That shall revive and clothe the dead and naked 

Behold those perish'd flowers to earth consign'd ; 

They, like mankind. 
Seek in their grave new birth. By nature's power, 

Each in its hour. 
Clothed in new beauty from its tomb shall spring, 
And from each tube and chalice heavenward incense 

fling- 
Laboratories of a wider fold 

I now behold. 
Where are prepared the harvests yet unborn, 

Of wine, oil, corn. — 
In those mute, rayless banquet-halls I see. 
Myriads of coming feasts with all their revelry. 

Yon teeming and minuter cells enclose 

The embryos. 
Of fruits and seeds, food of the feather'd race, 

Whose chanted grace. 
Swelling in choral gratitude on high. 
Shall with thanksgiving anthems melodize the sky. 

And what materials, mystic alchemist ! 

Dost thou enlist 
To fabricate this ever varied feast, 

For man, bird, beast ! 
Whence the life, plenty, music, beauty, bloom 1 
From silence, languor, death, unsightliness, and 
gloom ! 

From nature's magic hand whose touch makes sad- 
Eventual gladness, [ness 

The reverent moral alchemist may learn 
The art to turn 

Fate's roughest, hardest, most forbidding dross, 

Into the mental gold that knows not change or loss. 

Lose we a valued friend ] To soothe our wo 

Let us bestow 
On those who still survive an added love, 

So shall we prove, 
Howe'er the dear departed we deplore, [store. 

In friendship's sum and substance no diminish'd 

Lose we our health 1 Now may we fully know 

What thanks we owe 
For our sane years, perchance of lengthen'd scope; 

Now does our hope 
Point to the day when sickness taking flight, 
Shall make us better feel health's exquisite delight. 

In losing fortune many a lucky elf 

Has found himself — 
As all our moral bitters are design'd 

To brace the mind. 
And renovate its healthy tone, the wise 
Their sorest trials hail as blessings in disguise. 

There is no gloom on earth, for God above 

Chastens in love ; 
Transmuting sorrows into golden joy 

Free from alloy. 
His dearest attribute is still to bless, [fulness. 

And man's most welcome hymn is grateful cheer- 
N 



THOMAS MOORE. 



Thomas Moore, who has unquestionably 
attained to the highest reputation as a lyric 
poet of all contemporaries, was born in Dub- 
lin, on the twenty-eii^hth of May, 1780, and 
at the early a^e of fourteen years, became 
a student of Trinity College in his native 
city, where he took his degree in 1799. He 
then went to London, entered the Middle Tem- 
ple, and in due lime w"as admitted to the bar. 

In 1800 he published his translation of 
" Anacreon," which at once made him famous 
among the gay and the witty spirits who 
thronged the court of the Regent. Of this 
translation it may be said, that while it equals 
the original in grace and harmony, it unhap- 
pily surpasses it in seductiveness and volup- 
tuous license. In the next year it was followed 
by a volume of amatory poems, under the 
name of Little, which has been no less cele- 
brated for its lubricity and licentiousness. 

In 1803 he was appointed Registrar to the 
Admiralty m Bermuda, and daring his absence 
from England he made a flying visit to the 
United States, which gave rise to a series of 
satirical and somewhat bitter Odes and Epis- 
tles on society and manners in this country, 
published on his return to London, in 1806. 
These were attacked in an article by Jeffrey, 
and the poet sent the critic a challenge. The 
parties met, but the police prevented a duel, 
and the pistols, on examination, were found 
to contain paper pellets, which the seconds 
had cautiously substituted for bullets, a circum- 
stance alluded to by Byron in his "English 
Bards," in a manner which provoked a re- 
monstrance from Mr. Moore. The poets 
however, soon became intimate friends, and 
continued -SO till the death of Byron. 

In 1811 appeared Mr. Moore's "M. P., or 
the Blue Stocking;" in 1812, "The Two- 
penny Post Bag, by Thomas Browne the 
Younger;" in 1813, his "Irish Melodies;" 
in 1816, his " Sacred Songs," and in the fol- 
lowing year, his celebrated oriental romance 
of " Lalla Rookh," the four tales in which, 
and the framework which unites them, were 
compared in the " Edinburgh Review" to 
four beautiful pearls, joined together by a 

146 



thread of silk and gold. Much the best of 
these tales, and the best of all Mr. Moore's 
longer poems, is "The Fire-Worshippers," 
which is quoted entire in the following pages. 

Another volume of humorous sarcasm, 
entitled "The Fudge Family in Paris," 
appeared in 1818, and in 1823 his " Loves of 
the Angels," a poem containing some beauti- 
ful passages, but altogether inferior to his 
earlier productions, and undeserving of com- 
parison with Byron's " Heaven and Earth," 
or Croly's "Angel of the World," which are 
founded on the same subject. Beside these 
poems, he has written " Fables for the Holy 
Alliance," " Corruption and Intolerance," 
"The Skeptic," "The Summer Fete," and 
others, all of which are included in the edition 
of his poetical works published by Carey and 
Hart, in the present year. 

Mr. IMoore we believe commenced his 
career as an author Avith some brilliant but 
not very powerful political tracts, and he has 
since produced several prose works, none of 
which, excepting "The Epicurean," have 
added to his good reputation. The Life of 
Sheridan is an amusing book; and with 
such materials as were placed in the hands 
of his biographer it could not well have been 
made otherwise. When George IV. was told 
that Moore had murdered Sheridan, he ex- 
claimed, " Not so : he only atlempfed his life." 
His memoirs of Byron, which appeared in 
two quarto volumes in 1830, are alike un- 
worthy the subject and the author ; and 
the burning of some of Byron's papers, at 
the request of interested parties, was an act of 
dishonour toward the great poet, which no- 
thing can justify. The "Life of Captain 
Rock," and " The Irish Gentleman in Search 
of Religion," and the " History of Ireland," 
of which several volumes have been pub- 
lished, would hardly be attributed to the author 
of "Lalla Rookh," and the "Irish Melodies," 
were his name not on their title pages. 

The history of Mr. Moore is little more 
than the history of his writings. He is de- 
servedly popular in society for his amiable 
qualities and fascinating manners; he has 



THOMAS MOORE. 



147 



shared the intimacy of all the greatest men and 
writers of an era more prolific in great men 
and great geniuses than any since that of 
Shakspeare, and Raleigh, and Sidney ; and 
dividing his time between the quiet charms 
of domestic ease and the smiles of the most 
elevated society, he may be pronounced a 
happy and a fortunate man. As a song writer, 
he doubtless stands unrivalled. His versi- 
fication is exquisitely finished, harmonious, 
and musically toned. The sense is never obvi- 
ously sacrificed to the sound ; on the contrary, 
he delights in that species of antithetical and 



epigrammatic turn, which is generally held to 
excuse some roughness, and to be scarcely 
compatible with perfect melody of rhythm. 

In grace, both of thought and diction, in easy 
fluent wit, in melodj^ in brilliancy of fancy, in 
warmth and depth of sentiment, and even in 
purity and simplicity, when he chooses to be 
pure and simple, no one is superior to Moore : 
but in grandeur of conception, power of 
thought, and, above all, unity of purpose, and a 
great aim, he is singularly deficient, and these 
are necessary to the character, not of a sweet 
minstrel, but of a great poet. 



TFIE FIRE-WORSHIPPERS. 

'T IS moonlight over Oman's sea ; 

Her banks of pearl and palmy isles 
Bask in the night-beam beauteously, 

And her blue waters sleep in smiles. 
'T is moonlight in Harmozia's walls, 
And through her emir's porphyry halls, 
Where, some hours since, was heard the swell 
Of trumpet and the clash of zel, 
Bidding the bright-eyed sun farewell ; — 
The peaceful sun, whom better suits 

The music of the bulbul's nest, 
Or the light touch of lover's lutes, 

To sing him to his golden rest ! 
All husird — there's not a breeze in motion, 
The shore is silent as the ocean. 
If zephyrs come, so light they come, 

Nor leaf is stirr'd nor wave is driven ; — 
The wind-tower on the emir's dome 

Can hardly win a breath from heaven. 
E'en he, that tyrant Arab, sleeps 
Calm, while a nation round him weeps ; 
While curses load the air he breathes. 
And falchions from unnumber'd sheaths 
Are starting to avenge the shame 
His race had brought on Iran's name. 
Hard, heartless chief, unmoved alike 
Mid eyes that weep, and swords that strike ; — 
One of that saintly, murderous brood, 

To carnage and the Koran given. 
Who think through unbelievers' blood 

Lies their directest path to heaven : 
One, who will pause and kneel unshod 

In the warm blood his hand hath pour'd, 
To mutter o'er some text of God 

Engraven on his reeking sword ; — 
Nay, who can coolly note the line. 
The letter of those words divine. 
To which his blade, with searching art, 
Had sunk into its victim's heart ! 
Just Alia ! what must be thy look, 

When such a wretch before thee stands 
Unblushing, with thy sacred book, 

Turning the leaves with blood-stain'd hands, 
And wresting from its page sublime 
His creed of lust and hate and crime 1 



E'en as those bees of Trebizond, — 

Wliich, from the sunniest hours that glad 
With tbeir pure smile the gardens round, 

Dravy venom forth that drives men mad ! 
Never did fierce Arabia send 

A satrap forth more direly great; 
Never was Iran doom'd to bend 

Beneath a yoke of deadlier weight. 
Her throne had fallen — iier pride was crush' d- 
Her sons were willing slaves, nor blush'd 
In their own land — no more their own — 
To crouch beneath a stranger's throne. 
Her towers, where Mithra once had burn'd, 
To Moslem shrines — oh shame ! were turn'd, 
Where slaves, converted by the sword, 
Their mean, apostate worship pour'd, 
And cursed the faith their sires adored. 
Yet has she hearts, mid all this ill, 
O'er all this wreck high buoyant still 
With hope and vengeance : — hearts that yet, 

Like gems, in darkness issuing rays 
They've treasured from the sun that's set, 

Beam all the light of long-lost days ! — 
And swords she hath, nor weak nor slow 

7^0 second all such hearts can dare ; 
As he shall know, well, dearly know, 

Who sleeps in moonlight luxury there, 
Tranquil as if his spirit lay 
Becalm'd in heaven's approving ray ! 
Sleep on — for purer eyes than thine 
Those waves are hush'd, those planets shine. 
Sleep on, and be thy rest unmoved 

By the white moonbeam's dazzling power : 
None but the loving and the loved 

Should be awake at this sweet hour. 

And see — where, high above those rocks 
That o'er the deep their shadows fling, 

Yon turret stands ; where ebon locks, 
As glossy as a heron's wing 
Upon the turban of a king. 

Hang from the lattice, long and wild. 

'Tis she, that emir's blooming child, 

All truth, and tenderness, and grace, 

Though born of such ungentle race; 

An image of youth's radiant fountain 

Springing in a desolate mountain ! 



148 



THOMAS MOORE. 



Oh what a pure and sacred thing 

Is beauty, cuitain'd from the sight 
Of the gross world, illumining 

One only mansion with her Hght ! 
Unseen by man's disturbing eye. — 

The flower, that hloonis beneath the sea 
Too deep for sunbeams, doth not lie 

Hid in more chaste obscurity I 
So, Hinda, have thy face and mind. 
Like holy mysteries, lain ensiirined. 
And oh what transport for a lover 

To lift the veil that shades them o'er ! — 
Like those, who, all at once, discover 

In the lone deep some fairy shore, 

Where mortal never trod before, 
And sleep and wake in scented airs 
No lip had ever brcath'd but theirs ! 

Beautiful are the maids that glide 

On summer eves, through Yemen's dales ; 
And bright the glancing looks they hide 

Behind their iittere' roseate veils ; — 
And brides, as delicate and fair 
As the white jassamined flowers thi'y wear. 
Hath Yemen in her blissful clime. 

Who, luU'd in cool kiosk or bovver, 
Before their mirrors count the firo-.^, 

And grow still lovelier every hour. 
But never yet hath bride or maid 

In Araby's gay harams smiled, 
Whose boasted brightness would not fade 

Before Al Hassan's blooming child. 

Light as the angel-shapes that bless 
An infant's dream, yet not the less 
Rich in all womar^'s loveliness .- — 
With eyes so pure, that from their ray 
Dark vice would turn abash'd away, 
Blinded, like serpents when they gaze 
Upon the emerald's virgin blaze I — 
Yet, fiird with all youth's sweet desires, 
Mingling the meek and vestal lires 
Of other worlds with all the bliss, 
The fond, weak tenderness of this ! 
A soul, too, more than half divine, 

Where, through some shades of earthly feehng, 
Religion's soften'd glories shine, 

Like light through summer foli.ige stealing, 
Shedding a glow of such mild hue, 
So warm, and yet so shadowy too. 
As makes the very darkness there 
More beautiful than tight elsewhere ! 
Such is the maid, who, at this hour. 

Hath risen from her restless sleep, 
And sits alone in that high bower, 

Watching the still and shining deep. 
Ah ! 'twas not thus, — with tearful eyes 

And beating heart, — she used to gaze 
On the magnificent earth and skies. 

In her own land, in happier days. 
Why looks she now so anxious down 
Among those rocks, whose rugged frown 

Blackens the mirror of the deep 1 
Whom waits she all this lonely night 1 

Too rough the rocks, too bold the steep, 
For man to scale that turret's height ! — 



So deem'd at least her thoughtful sire. 

When high, to catch the cool night air 
After the day-beam's withering fire, 

He built her bower of freshness there, 
And had it deck'd with costliest skill, 

And fondly thought it safe as fair : — 
Think, reverend dreamer ! think so still. 

Nor wake to learn what love can dare — 
Love, all-defying love, who sees 
No charm in trophies won with ease ; — 
Whose rarest, dearest fruits of bliss 
Are pluck'd on danger's precipice I 
Bolder than they, who dare not dive 

For pearls, but when the sea's at rest, 
Love, in the tempest most alive, 

Hath ever held that pearl the best 
He finds beneath the stormiest water ! 
Yes — Araby's unrivall'd daughter, 
Though high that tower, that rock-way rude, 

There's one who, but to kiss thy cheek, 
Would climb th' untrodden solitude 

Of Ararat's tremendous peak, 
And think its steeps, though dark and dread, 
Heav'n's path-ways, if to thee they led ! 
E'en now thou seest the flashing spray. 
That lights his oar's impatient way : 
E'en now thou hear'st the sudden shock 
Of his swift bark against the rock. 
And stretchest down thy arms of snow. 
As if to lift him from below ! 
Like her to whom, at dead of night, 
The bridegroom, with his locks of light. 
Came, in the flush of love and pride, 
And scaled the terrace of his bride ; — 
When, as she saw him rashly spring. 
And midway up in danger cling, 
She flung him down her long black hair, 
Exclaiming, breathless, " There, love there !" 
And scarce did manlier nerve uphold 

The hero Zal in that fond hour, 
Than wings the youth, who, fleet and bold 

Now climbs the rocks to Hinda's bower. 
See — light as up their granite steeps 

The rock-goats of Arabia clamber, 
Fearless from crag to crag he leaps, 

And now is in the maiden's chamber. 

She loves — hut knows not whom she loves. 

Nor w'hat his race, nor whence he came ; — 
Like one who meets, in Indian groves, 

Some beauteous bird, without a name. 
Brought by the last ambrosial breeze. 
From isles in the undiscover'd sea.s, 
To show his plumage for a day 
To wondering eyes, and wing away ! 
Will fie thus fly — her nameless lover 1 

Alia forbid ! 'twas by a moon 
As fair as this, while singing over 

Some ditty to her soft Kanoon, 
Alone, at this same watching hour, 

She first beheld his radiant eyes 
Gleam through the lattice of the bower. 

Where nightly now they mix their sighs ; 
And thought some spirit of the air 
(For what could waft a mortal there ]) 



THOMAS MOORE. 



149 



Was pausing on his moonlight way 

To listen to her lonely lay ! 

This fancy ne'er hath left her mind : 

And though, when terror's swoon had past, 
She saw a youth, of mortal kind, 

Before her in obeisance cast, — 
Yet often since, when he hath spoken 
Strange, awful words, — and gleams have broken 
From his dark eyes, too bright to bear, 

Oh ! she hath fear'd her soul was given 
To some unhallow'd child of air. 

Some erring spirit, cast from heaven, 
Like those angelic youths of old, 
Who burn'd for maids of mortal mould, 
Bewilder'd left the glorious skies. 
And lost their heaven for woman's eyes ! 

Fond girl ! nor fiend, nor angel he, 
Who woos thy young simplicity ; 
But one of earth's impassion'd sons, 

As warm in love, as fierce in ire. 
As the best heart whose current runs 

Full of the day-god's living fire ! 

But quench'd to-night that ardour seems. 

And pale his cheek, and sank his brow : 
Never before, but in her dreams, 

Had she beheld him pale as now : 
And those were dreams of troubled sleep. 
From which 't was joy to wake and weep , 
Visions that will not be forgot. 

But sadden every waken scene. 
Like warning ghosts, that leave the spot 

All wither'd where they once have been ! 

" How sweetly," said the trembling maid, 
Of her own gentle voice afraid. 
So long had they in silence stood. 
Looking upon that tranquil flood — 
" How sweetly does the moonbeam smile 
To-night upon yon leafy isle ! 
Oft, in my fiincy's wanderings, 
I've wish'd that little isle had wings, 
And we, v^'ithin its fairy bowers. 

Were wafted off to seas unknown, 
Where not a pulse should beat but ours, 

And we might live, love, die alone — 
Far from the cruel and the cold — 

Where the bright eyes of ansels only 
Should come around us to behold 

A paradise so pure and lonely ! 
Would this be world enough for theel" — 
Playful she turn'd, that he might see. 

The passing smile her cheek put on ; 
But when she mark'd how mournfully 

His eyes met hers, that smile was gone ; 
And bursting into heart- felt tears, 
" Yes, yes," she cried, " my hourly fears, 
My dreams have boded all too right — 
We part — for ever part — to-night ! 
I knew, I knew it could not last — 
'Twas bright, 'twas heavenly, but 'tis past! 
Oh ! ever thus, from childhood's hour, 

I've seen my fondest hopes decay ; 
I never loved a tree or flower. 

But 'twas the first to fade away. 



I never nursed a dear gazelle. 

To glad me with its soft black eye, 
But when it came to know me well, 

And love me, it was sure to die ! 
Now too — the joy most like divine, 

Of all I ever dreamt or knew. 
To see thee, hear thee, call thee mine — 

Oh misery ! must I lose that too ] 
Yet go — on peril's brink we meet; — 

Those frightful rocks — that treacherous sea- 
No, never come again — though sweet. 

Though heaven — it may be death to thee. 
Farewell — and blessings on thy way. 

Where'er thou goest, beloved stranger ! 
Better to sit and watch that ray. 
And think thee safe, though far away. 

Than have thee near me, and in danger !" 

" Danger ! — oh, tempt me not to boast," 
Tlie youth exclaim'd — " thou little know'st 
What he can brave, who, born and nurst 
In danger's paths, has dared her worst ! 
Upon whose ear the signal-word 

Of strife and death is hourly breaking; 
Who sleeps with head upon the sword 

His fever'd hand must grasp in waking ! 
Danger ! — " 

»' Say on — thou fear'st not then, 
And we may meet — oft meet again V 

" Oh ! look not so — beneath the skies 

I now fear nothing but those eyes. 

If aught on earth could charm or force 

My spirit from its destined course, — 

If aught could make this soul forget 

The bond to which its seal is set, 

'T would be those eyes ; — they, only they, 

Could melt that sacred seal away ! 

But no — 'tis fix'd — my awful doom 

Is fix'd — on this side of the tomb 

We meet no more — why, why did heaven 

Mingle two souls that earth has riven. 

Has rent asunder wide as ours 1 

Oh, Arab maid ! as soon the pov\'ers 

Of light and darkness may combine. 

As I be link'd with thee or thine ! 

Thy father " 

" Holy Alia save 

His gray-head from that lightning glance ! 
Thou know'st him not — he loves the brave 

Nor lives there under heaven's expanse 
One who would prize, would worship thee. 
And thy bold spirit, more than he. 
Oft when, in childhood, I have play'd 

With the bright falchion by his side, 
I've heard him swear his lisjjing maid 

In time should be a warrior's bride. 
And still, whene'er, at haram hours, 
I take him cool sherbets and flowers, 
He tells me, when in playful mood, 

A hero shall my bridegroom be, 
Since maids are best in battle woo'd. 

And won with shouts of victory ! 
Nay, turn not, from me — thou alone 
Art form'd to make both hearts thy own, 
n2 



150 



THOMAS MOORE. 



Go — join his sacred ranks — thou know'st 

The unholy strife these Persians wage ; — 
Good heaven that frown ! — e'en now thou glow'st 
With more than mortal warrior's rage. 
Haste to the camp by morning's light, 
And, when that sword is raised in fight, 
Oh, still remember love and I 
Beneath its shadow trembling lie! 
One victory o'er those slaves of fire, 
Those impious Ghebers, whom my sire 

Abhors " 

" Hold, hold — thy words are death — " 
The stranger cried, as wild he flung 
His mantle back, and show'd beneath 

The Gheber belt that round him clung. 
" Here, maiden look — weep — blush to see 
All that thy sire abhors in me ! 
Yes — / am of that impious race. 

Those slaves of lire, who, morn and even, 
Hail their Creator's dwelling-place 

Among the living lights of heaven ! 
Ves — / am of that outcast few, 
To Iran and to vengeance true. 
Who curse the hour your Arabs came 
To desolate our shrines of flame. 
And swear, before God's burning eye. 
To break our country's chains, or die. 
Thy bigot sire — nay, tremble not — 

He who gave birth to those dear eyes, 
With me is sacred as the spot 

From which our fires of worship rise ! 
But know — 'twas he I sought that night, 
When, from my watch-boat on the sea, 
I caught this turret's glimmering light, 

And up the rude rocks desperately 
Rush'd to my prey — thou know'st the rest — 
I chmb'd the gory vulture's nest. 
And found a trembling dove within ; — 
Thine, thine the victory — thine the sin — 
If love hath made one thought his own. 
That vengeance claims first — last — alone I 
Oh ! had we never, never met, 
Or could this heart e'en now forget 
How link'd, how bless'd we might have been, 
Had fate not frown'd so dark between, 
Hadst thou been born a Persian maid. 

In neighbouring valleys had we dwelt, 
Through the same fields in childhood play'd, 

At the same kindling altar knelt, — 
Then, then, while all those nameless ties, 
In which the charm of country lies. 
Had round our hearts been hourly spun. 
Till Iran's cause and thine were one; — 
While in thy lute's awakening sigh 
I heard the voice of days gone by, 
And saw in every smile of thine 
Returning hours of glory shine ! — 
While the wrong'd spirit of our land [thee — 

Lived, look'd, and spoke her wrongs through 
God ! who could then this sword withstand ! 

Its very flash were victory ! 
But now — estranged, divorced for ever, 
Far as the grasp of fate can sever ; 
Our only ties what love has wove, — 

Faith, friends, and country, sunder'd wide; — 



And then, then only, true to love. 

When false to all that 's dear beside ! 
Thy father Iran's deadliest foe — 
Thyself, perhaps, e'en now — but no — 
Hate never look'd so lovely yet ! 

No — sacred to thy soul will be 
The land of him virho could forget 

All hut that bleeding land for thee I 
When other eyes shall see, umiioved, 

Her widows mourn, her warriors fall. 
Thou 'It think how well one Gheber loved, 

And for kis sake thou 'It weep for all ! 

But look " 

With sudden start he turn'd 

And pointed to the distant wave, 
Where lights, like charnel meteors, burn'd 

Bluely, as o'er some seaman's grave ; 
And fiery darts, at intervals. 

Flew up all sparkhng from the main. 
As if each star that nightly falls. 

Were shooting back to heaven again. 

" My signal-lights ! — ^I must away — 

Both, both are ruin'd, if I stay. 

Farewell — sweet life f thou cling'st in vain- 

Now — Vengeance ! — I am thine again." 

Fiercely he broke away, nor stopp'd 

Nor look'd — but from the lattice dropp'd 

Down mid the pointed crags beneath. 

As if he fled from love to death. 

While pale and mute young Hinda stood. 

Nor moved, till in the silent flood 

A momentary plunge below 

Startled her from her trance of vi'o; 

Shrieking she to the lattice fi<?w, — 

" I come — I come — if in that tide 
Thou sleep'st to-night — I'll sleep there too, 

In death's cold wedlock by thy side. 
Oh ! I woeld ask no happier bed 

Than the chill wave my love lies under;— 
Sweeter to rest together dead. 

Far sweeter, than to live asunder !" 
But no — their hour is not yet come — 

Again she sees his pinnace fl^i. 
Wafting him fleetly to his home. 

Where'er that ill-starr'd home may lie ; 
And calm and smooth it seem'd to win 

Its moonlight way before the wind, 
As if it bore all peace within, 

Nor left one breaking heart behind. 



The princess, whose heart was sad enough already, 
couM h;ive wished that Feramorz had chosen a less 
melancholy story; as it is only to the happy that tears 
are a luxury. Her ladies, however, wore l>y no means 
sorry that love was once more the poet's theme ; for, 
when he spoke of love, they said, his voire was as sweet 
as if he had chewed the leaves of that enchanted tree, 
which grows over th&tonil) of the musician, Tan-Sein. 

Their road all the morning had lain throush a very 
dreary country ;— throuah valleys, covered with a low 
bushy jungle, where, in more than one place, the awful 
signal of the bamboo staff, with the white fias at its top, 
reminded the traveller that in that very spot the tiger 
had made some human cre\ture his victim. It was there- 
fore with much pleasure that they arrivetj at sunset in a 
safe and lovely glen, and encamped under one of those 



THOMAS MOORE. 



151 



hnly trees, whnse smooth columns and spreading roofs 
sRem to destine them for nutural temples of relij-'ion. 
Beneath Ihe shade, some pious hands had erected pillars 
ornamented with the most beautiful porcelain, which now 
supplied the use of mirrors to the youn? maidens, as they 
adjusted their hair in descending from the palankeens. 
Here while, as usual, the princess sat listening anxiously, 
with Fadladeen in one of his loftiest moods of criticism hy 
her side, the young poet, leaning against a branch of the 
tree, thus continued liis story : — 

The mom had risen clear and calm. 

And o'er tlie Green Sea palely shines. 
Revealing- Bahrein's groves of palm. 

And lighting Kisma's amber vines. 
Fresh smell the shores of Arahy, 
While breezes from the Indian sea 
Blow round Sclama's sainted cape. 

And curl the shining flood beneath, — 
Whose waves are rich with many a grape, 

And cocoa-nut and flowery wreath, 
Which pious seamen, as they pass'd, 
Plad toward that holy headland cast — 
Oblations to the genii there 
For gentle skies and breezes fair ! 
The nightingale now bends her flight 
From the high trees, where all the night 

She sung so sweet, with none to listen, 
And hides her from the morning star 

Where thickets of pomegranate glisten 
In the clear dawn, — bespangled o'er 

With dew, whose night-drops would not stain 
The best and brightest scimetar 
That ever youthful sultan wore 

On the first morning of his reign ! 

And see — the sun himself! — on wings 
Of glory up the cast he springs. 
Angel of light ! who, from the time 
Those heavens began their march sublime. 
Hath first of all the starry choir 
Trod in his Maker's steps of fire I 

Where are the days, thou wondrous sphere, 
When Iran, like a sun-flower, turn'd 
To meet that eye where'er it burn'd 1 — 

When, from the banks of Benderaeer 
To the nut-groves of Samarcand 
Thy temples flamed o'er all the land 1 
Where are they 1 ask the shades of them 
Who, on Cadessia's bloody plains, 

.Saw fierce invaders pluck the gem 

From Iran's broken diadem, 
And bind her ancient faith in chains : — 
Ask the ]ioor exile, cast alone 
On foreign shores, unlovfd. unknown. 
Beyond the Caspian's Iron Gates, 

Or on the snowy Mossian mountains, 
Far from his beauteous land of dates, 

Her jasmine bowers and sunny fountains ! 
Yet happier so than if he troil 
His own beloved but blighted sod. 
Beneath a despot stranger's nod ! — 
Oh ! he would rather houseless roatn 

Wiierc free<loin and his God may lead, 
Than be the sleekest slave at home 

That crouches to the conqueror's creed I 
Is Iran's pride then gone for ever, 



Quench'd with the flame in Mithra's caves'! — 
No — she has sons that never — never — 
Will stoop to be the Moslem's slaves. 
While heaven has light or earth has graves. 
Spirits of fire, that brood not long, 
But flash resentment back for wrong ; 
And hearts, where, slow but deep, the seeds 
Of vengeance ripen into deeds ; 
Till, in some treacherous hour of calm. 
They burst, like Zeilan's giant palm, 
Whose buds fly open with a sound 
That shakes the pigmy forests round ! 

Yes, Emir! he, who scaled that tower. 

And, had he reach'd thy slumbering breast. 
Had taught thee, in a Gheber's power. 

How safe e'en tyrants' heads may rest — 
Is one of many, brave as he, 
Who loathe thy haughty race and thee ; 
Who, though they know the strife is vain — 
Who. though they know the riven chain 
Snaps but to enter in the heart 
Of him who rends its links apart. 
Yet dare the issue — blest to be 
E'en for one bleeding moment free. 
And die in pangs of liberty ! 
Thou know'st them well — 'tis some moon since 

Thy turban'd troops and blood-red flags. 
Thou satrap of a bigot prince ! 

Have swarm'd among these Green Sea crags ; 
Yet here, e'en here, a sacred band, 
Ay, in the portal of that land 
Thou, Arab, darest to call thy own. 
Their spears across thy path have thrown ; 
Here — ere the winds half wing'd thee o'er — 
RebeUion braved thee from the shore. 

Rebellion ! foul, dishonouring word. 

Whose wrongful blight so oft has stain'd 
The holiest cause that tongue or sword 

Of mortal ever lost or gain'd. 
How many a spirit, born to bless, 

Hath sunk beneath that withering name, 
Whom but a day's, an hour's, success 

Had wafted to eternal fame ! 
As exhalations when they burst 
From the warm earth, if chill'd at first, 
If check'd in soaring from the plain, 
Darken to fogs and sink again ; — 
But if they once triumphant spread 
Tiieir wings above the mountain-head, 
Become enthroned in upper air. 
And turn to sun-bright glories there ! 

And who is he, that wields the might 

Of freedom on the Green Sea brink, 
Before vidiose sabre's dazzling light 

The eves of Yemen's warriors wink ? 
Who comes embower'd in the spears 
Of Kerman's hardy mountaineers'! — 
Those mountaineers, that, truest, last. 

Cling to their country's ancient rites. 
As if that god whose eyelids cast 

Their closing gleam on Iran's heights, 
Among her snowy mountains threw 
The last light of his worship too ! 



152 



THOMAS MOORE. 



'Tis Hafed — name of fear, whose sound 

Cliills like the muttering of a charm ; — 
Shout but that awful name around. 

And palsy shakes the manliest arm. 
'Tis Hafed, most accurst and dire 
(So rank'd by Moslem hate and ire) 
Of all the rebel Sons of Fire ! 
Of whose malign, tremendous power 
The Arabs, at their mid-watch hour 
Such tales of fearful wonder tell, 
That each affrighted sentinel 
Pulls down his cowl upon his eyes. 
Lest Hafed in the midst should rise ! 
A man, they say, of monstrous birth, 
A mingled race of flame and earth, 
Sprung from those old, enchanted kings. 

Who in their fairy helms, of yore, 
A feather from the mystic wings 

Of the Simoorgh resistless wore; 
And gifted by the Fiends of Fire, 
Who groan to see their shrines expire, 
With charms that, all in vain withstood. 
Would drown the Koran's light in blood ! 

Such were the tales that won belief, 

And such the colouring fancy gave 
To a young, warm, and dauntless chief, — 

One who, no more than mortal brave. 
Fought for the land his soul adored. 

For happy homes, and altars free, — 
His only talisman, the sword. 

His only spell-word, liberty ! 
One of that ancient hero line, 
Along whose glorious current shine 
Names that have sanctified their blood; 
As Lebanon's small mountain flood 
Is rendcr'd holy by the ranks 
Of sainted cedars on its banks ! 
'T was not for him to crouch the knee 
Tamely to Moslem tyraniiy ; — 
'T was not for him, whose soul was cast 
In the bright mould of ages past. 
Whose melancholy spirit, fed 
With all the glories of the dead, 
Though framed for Iran's happiest years. 
Was born among her chains and tears ! 
'Twas not for him to swell the crowd 
Of slavish heads, that, shrinking, bow'd 
Before the Moslem, as he pass'd, 
lAke shrubs beneath the poison blast — 
No — far he fled, indignant fled 

The pageant of his country's shame ; 
While every tear her children shed 

Fell on his soul like drops of flame ; 
And as a lover hails the dawn 

Of a first smile, so welcomed he 
The sparkle of the first sword drawn 
For vengeance and for liberty ! 

But vain was valour — vain the flower 

Of Kerman, in that deathful hour. 

Against Al Hassan's whelming power. 

In vain they met him, helm to lielm. 

Upon the threshold of that realm 

He came in bigot pomp to sway. 

And with their corpses block'd his way — 



In vain — for every lance they raised. 
Thousands around the conqueror blazed ; 
For every arm that lined their shore, 
Myriads of slaves were wafted o'er — 
A bloody, bold, and countless crowd, 
Before whose swarms as fast they bow'd 
As dates beneath the locust cloud ! 

There stood — but one short league away 
From old Harmozia's sultry bay — 
A rocky mountain, o'er the sea 
Of Oman beetling awfully : 
A last and solitary link 

Of those stupendous chains that reach 
From the broad Caspian's reedy brink 

Down winding to the Green Sea beach. 
Around its base the bare rocks stood, 
Like naked giants, in the flood. 

As if to guard the gulf across : 
While, on its peak, that braved the sky, 
A ruin'd temple tower'd, so high 

That oft the sleeping albatross 
Struck the wild ruins with her wing. 
And from her cloud-rock'd slumbering 
Started — to find man's dwelling there 
In her own silent fields of air ! 
Beneath, terrific caverns gave 
Dark welcome to each stormy wave 
That dash'd, like midnight revellers, in ; — 
And such the strange, mysterious din 
At times throughout those caverns roll'd ;— 
And such the fearful wonders told 
Of restless sprites imprison'd there, 
That bold were Moslem, who would dare, 
At twilight hour, to steer his skitF 
Beneath the Gheber's lonely cliflu 

On the land side, those towers sublime, 
That seem'd above the grasp of time. 
Were sever'd from the haunts of men 
By a wide, deep, and wizard glen, 
So fathomless, so full of gloom. 

No eye could pierce the void between ; 
It seem'd a place where Gholes might come 
With their foul banquets from the tomb, 

And in its caverns feed unseen. 
Like distant thunder, from below, 

The sound of many torrents came ; 
Too deep for eye or ear to knov»r 
If 't were the sea's imprison'd flow, 

Or floods of ever-restless flame. 
For each ravine, each rocky spire 
Of that vast mountain stood on fire ; 
And, thouijh for ever past the days 
When God was worshipp'd in the blaze 
That from its lofty altar shone, — 
Though fled the priests, the votaries gone. 
Still did the mighty flame burn on 
Through chance and change, through good and ill 
Like its own God's eternal will. 
Deep, constant, bright, unquenchable ! 

Thither the vanquish'd Hafed led 

His little army's last remains ; — 
" Welcome, terrific glen !" he said, 
" Thy gloom, that Eblis' self might dread. 

Is heaven to him who flies from chains !" 



THOMAS MOORE. 



153 



O'er a dark, narrow bridge-way, known 

To him and to his chiefs alone, 

They cross'd the chasm and gain'd the towers ;— 

" This home," he cried, " at least is ours — 

Here we may bleed, unmock'd by hymns 

Of Moslem triumph o'er our head ; 
Here we may fall, nor leave our limbs 

To quiver to the Moslem's tread ; 
Stretch'd on this rock, while vulture's beaks 
Are whetted on our yet warm ciieeks. 
Here, — hajjpy that no tyrant's eye 
Gloats on our torments — we may die ! 

'Twas night when to those towers they came ; 
And gloomily the fitful flame. 
That from the ruin'd altar broke. 
Glared on his features, as he spoke : — 

" 'T is o'er — what men could do, we've done : 
If Iran luill look tamely on, 
And see her priests, her warriors driven 

Before a sensual bigot's nod, 
A wretch, who takes his lusts to heaven, 

And makes a pander of his God ! 
If her proud sons, her high-born souls, 

Men, in whose veins — oh last disgrace ! 
The blood of Zal, and Rustam, rolls, — 

If they will court this upstart race, 
And turn from Mitlira's ancient ray, 
To kneel at shrines of yesterday ! 
If they tvill crouch to Iran's foes. 

Why, let them — till the land's despair 
Cries out to heav'n, and bondage grows 

Too vile for e'en the vile to bear ! 
Till shame at last, long hidden, burns 
Their inmost core, and conscience turns 
Each coward tear the slave lets fall 
Back on his heart in drops of gall ! 
But here, at least, are arms unchain'd, 
And souls that thraldom never stain'd ;^ 

This spot, at least, no foot of slave 
Or satrap ever yet profaned ; 

And, though but few — though fast the wave 
Of life is ebbing from our veins. 
Enough for vengeance still remains. 
As panthers, after set of sun. 
Rush from the roots of Lebanon 
Across the dark sea-robber's way, 
We'll bound upon our startled prey ; — 
And when some hearts tViat proudest swell 
Have felt our filchion's last farewell ; 
When hope's expiring throb is o'er, 
And e'en despair can prompt no more, 
This spot shall be the sacre<l grave 
Of the last few who, vainly brave. 
Die for the land they cannot save !" 
His chiefs stood round — each shining blade 
Upon the broken altar laid — 
And thougli so wild and desolate 
Those courts, where once the mighty sate ; 
No longer on those mouldering towers 
Was seen the feast of fruits and flowers, 
With whirh of old the Magi f.-d 
The wandering spirits of their dead ; 
Though neither priests ni^r rites were there, 

Nor charmed leaf of pure pomegranate, 

20 



Nor hymn, nor censer's fragrant air. 

Nor symbol of their worshipp'd planet; 
Yet the same God that heard their sires 
Heard them ,• while on that altar's fires 
They swore the latest, holiest deed 
Of the few hearts, still left to bleed, 
Should be, in Iran's injured name. 
To die upon that mount of tlame — 
The last of all her patriot line. 
Before her last untrampled shrine ! 

Brave, sufl'ering souls ! they little knew 
How many a tear their injuries drew 
From one meek maid, one gentle foe. 
Whom love first touch'd with others' wo — 
Whose life, as free from thought as sin, 
Slept like a lake, till love threw in 
His talisman, and woke the tide. 
And spread its trembling circles wide. 
Once, Emir! thy unheeding child. 
Mid ail tiiis havoc, bloom'd and smiled, — 
Tranquil as on some battle-plain 

The Persian lily shines and towers, 
Before the combat's reddening stain 

H:ith fall'n upon her golden flowers. 
Light-hearted maid, unawed, unmoved. 
While Heaven but spared the sire she loved, 
Once at thy evening tales of blood 
Unlistening and aloof she stood — 
And oft, when thou hast paced along. 

Thy haram halls with furious heat. 
Hast thou not cursed her cheorful song, 

That came across thee, calm and sweet, 
Like lutes of angels, touch'd so near 
Hell's confines, that the damn'd can hear. 
Far other feelings love hath brought — 

Her soul all flame, her brow all sadness. 
She now has but the one dear thought, 

And thinks that o'er, almost to madness. 
Oft doth her sinking heart recall 
His words — " for /» y sake weep for all ;" 
And bitterly, as day on day 

Of rebel carnage fast succeeds, 
She weeps a lover snatch'd away 

In every Gheber wretch that bleeds. 
There's not a sabre meets her eye. 

But with his life-blood seems to swim; 
There 's not an arrow wings the sky, 

But fancy turns its point to him. 
No more she brings with footstep light 
Al Hassan's falchion for the fight ; 
And — had he look'd with clearer sight — 
Had not the mists, that ever rise 
From a foul spirit, dimm'd his eyes — 
He would have mark'd her shuddering frame. 
When from the field of blood he came ; 
The faltering speech — the look estranged — 
Voice, step, and life, and beauty changed — 
He would have mark'd all this, and known 
Such change is wrought by love alone ! 

Ah ! not the love, that should have bless'd 
So young, so innocent a breast; 
Not the pure, open, prosperous love, 
That, pledged on earth and seal'd above. 
Grows in the world's approving eyes, 



154 



THOMAS MOORE. 



In friendship's smile and home's caress, 
Collecting all the heart's sweet ties 

Into one knot of happiness ! 
No, Hinda, no — thy fatal flame 
Is nursed in silence, sorrow, shame. — 

A passion, without hope or pleasure, 
In thy soul's darkness buried deep, 

It lies, like some ill-gotten treasure, — 
Some idol, without shrine or name, 
O'er which its pale-eyed votaries keep 
Unholy watch, while others sleep I 

Seven nights have darken'd Oman's sea. 

Since last, beneath the moonlight ray. 
She saw his light oar rapidly 

Hurrv her Gheber's bark away, — 
And still she goes, at midnight hour. 
To weep alone in that high bower, 
And watch, and look along the deep 
For him whose smiles first made her weep. 
But watching, weeping, all was vain, 
She never saw his bark again. 
The owlet's solitary cry, 
The night-hawk, flitting darkly by. 

And oft the hateful carrion bird. 
Heavily flapping his clogged wing, 
Which reek'd with that day's banqueting, 

Was all she saw, was all she heard. 

'Tis the eighth morn — Al Hassan's brow 

Is brighten'd with unusual joy — 
What mighty mischief glads him now, 

Who never smiles but to destroy 1 
The sparkle upon Ilerkend's sea. 
When tost at midnight furiously. 
Tells not a wreck and ruin nigh 
More surely than that smiling eye ! 
" Up, daughter up — the Kerna's breath 
Has blown a blast would waken death, 
And yet thou sleep'st — up, chilil, and see 
This blessed day for heaven and me, 
A day more rich in Pagan blood 
Than ever flash'd o'er Oman's flood. 
Before another dawn shall shine, 
His head, heart, limbs — will all be mine. 
This very night his blood shall steep 
These hands all over ere I sleep I" 
" His blood !" she faintly scream'd — her mind 
Still singling one from all mankind — 
" Yes — spite of his ravines and towers, 
Hafed, my child, this night is ours. 
Thanks to all-conquering treachery. 

Without whose aid the links accurst. 
That bind these impious slaves, would be 

Too strong for AUa's self to burst ! 
That rebel fiend, whose blade has spread 
My path with piles of Moslem dead, 
Whose baffling spells had almost driven 
Back from their course the swords of heaven, 
This night, with all his band shall know 
How deep an Arab's steel can go, 
When God and vengeance speed the blow, 
And — Prophet ! — by that holy wreath 
Thou wor'st on Ohod's field of death, 
I swear, for every sob that parts 
In anguish from these heathen hearts. 



A gem from Persia's plunder'd mines 
Shall glitter on thy shrine of shrines. 
But ha ! — she sinks — that look so wild — 
Those livid lips — my child, my child, 
This life of blood befits not thee, 
And thou must back to Araby. 

Ne'er had I risk'd thy timid sex 
In scenes that man himself might dread, 
Had I not hoped our every tread 

Would be on prostrate Persian necks — 
Curst race, they ofter swords instead I 
But cheer thee, maid — the wind that now 
Is blowing o'er thy feverish brow, 
To-day shall waft thee from the shore ; 
And, ere a drop of this night's gore 
Have time to chill in yonder towers. 
Thou 'It see thy own sweet Arab bowers !" 

His bloody boast was all too true — 
There lurk'd one wretch among the few 
Whom Hafed's eagle eye could count 
Around him on that fiery mount. 
One miscreant, who for gold betray'd 
The pathway through the valley's shade, 
To those high towers where freedom stood 
In her last hold of flame and blood. 
Left on the field last dreadful night, 
When, sallying from their sacred height. 
The Ghebors fought hope's farewell fight. 
He lay — but died not with the brave ; 
That sun, which should have gilt his grave, 
Saw him a traitor and a slave ; — 
And, while the few, who thence return'd 
To their high rocky fortress, mourn'd 
For him among the matchless dead 
They left behind on glory's bed. 
He lived, and, in the face of morn, 
Laugh'd them and faith and heaven to scorn ! 

Oh for a tongue to curse the slave, 

Whose treason, like a deadly blight, 
Comes o'er the councils of the brave. 

And blasts them in their hour of might ! 
May life's unblessed cup, for him. 
Be drugg'd with treacheries to the brim— 
With hopes, that but allure to fly, 

With joys that vanish while he sips, 
Like Dead Sea fruits, that tempt the eye. 

But turn to ashes on the lips ! 
His country's curse, his children's shame, 
Outcast of virtue, peace, and fame. 
May he, at last, with lips of flame 
On the parch'd desert thirsting die, — 
While lakes that slione in mockery nigh 
Are fading oflT, untouch'd. untasted 
Like the once glorious hopes he blasted ! 
And, when from earth his spirit flies. 

Just Prophet, let the damn'd one dwell 
Full in the sight of Paradise, 

Beholding heaven and feeling hell ! 

Lalla RnoKH had had a dream the nisht before, 
which, in spite nf the inipendin;; fnte of poor Hafed, 
made her heart mnre than usually rheerfiil during the 
morning, and gave her cheeks all the freshened anima- 
tion of a flower that the Bidmiisk has just passed over. 
She fancied that she was sailing on the Eastern Ocean, 



THOMAS MOORE. 



155 



where the sea-gipsies who live for ever on the water, 
enjoy a perpetual summer in wandering from isle to isle, 
when she saw a small gilded bark approaching her. It 
was like one of tliose boats which the MaUlivian island- 
ers annually send adrift, at the mercy of winds and waves, 
loaded with perfumes, flowers, and odoriferous wood, as 
an offering to the Spirit whom they call liing of the Sea. 
At first, this little bark appeared to be empty, but on 

coming nearer 

She had proceeded thus fir in relating the dream to her 
ladies, when Ferainorz appeared at the door of the pa- 
vilion. In his presence, of course, everything else was 
forgotten, and the continuance of the story was instantly 
requested by all. Fresh wood of aloes was set to burn 
in the cassolets; — the violet sherbets were hastily 
handed round, and, after a short prelude on his lute, in 
the pathetic measure of Nava, which is always used to 
express the lamentations of absent lovers, the poet thus 
continued : — 

The (lay is lowering — stilly black 
Sleeps the grim wave, while heaven's rack, 
Dispersed and wild, 'twixt earth and sky 
Hangs like a shatter'd canopy ! 
There 's not a cloud in that blue plain. 

But tells of storm to come or past; 

Here, flying loosely as the mane 

Of a young war-horse in the blast ; — 
There, roll'd in masses dark and swelling. 
As proud to be the thunder's dwelling ! 
While some, already burst and riven. 
Seem melting down the verge of heaven ; 
As though the infant storm had rent 

The mighty womb that gave him birth, 
And, having swept the firmament. 

Was now in fierce career for earth. 
On earth, 'twas yet all calm around, 
A pulseless silence, dread, profound, 
More awful than the tempest's sound. 
The diver steer'd for Onnus' bowers, 
And moor'd his skill' till calmer hours ; 
The sea-birds, with portentous screech, 
Flew fast to land : — upon the beach 
The pilot oft had paused, with glance 
Turn'd upward to tiiat wild expanse ; 
And all was boding, drear and dark 
As her own soul, when Hinda's bark 
Went slowly from the Persian shore. — 
No music timed her parting oar. 
Nor friends, upon the lessening strand 
Linger'd, to wave the unseen hand, 
Or speak the farewell, heard no more. 
But lone, unheeded, from the bay 
The vessel takes its mournful way, 
Like some ill-destined bark that steers 
In silence through the Gate of Tears. 

And where was stern A] Hassan then ] 
Could not that saintly scourge of men 
From bloodshed and devotion spare 
One minute for a farewell there ? 
No — close within, in changeful fits 
Of cursing and of prayer, he sits 
In savage loneliness to brood 
Upon the coming night of blood, 

With that keen, second-scent of death. 
By which tlie vulture sinilFs his food 

In the still warm and living breath ! 



While o'er the wave his weeping daughter, 

Is wafted from the scenes of slaughter, 

As a young bird of Babylon, 

Let loose to tell of victory won. 

Flies home, with wing, ah ! not unstain'd 

By the red hands that held her chain'd. 

And does the long-left home she seeks 

Light up no gladness on her cheeks ] 

The flowers she nursed — the well-known groves, 

Where oft in dreams her spirit roves — 

Once more to see her dear gazelles 

Come bounding witli their silver bells ; 

Her birds' new plumage to bejiold. 

And the gay, gleaming fishes count, 
She left, all fillctted with gold, 

Shooting around their jasper fount. — 
Her little garden mosque to see. 

And once again, at evening hour. 
To tell her ruby rosary 

In her own sweet acacia bower. 
Can these delights, that wait her now, 
Call up no sunshine on her brow ? 
No — silent, from her train apart, — 
As if e'en now she felt at heart 
The chill of her approaching doom, — 
She sits, all lovely in her gloom, 
Asa pale angel of the grave ; 
.\nd o'er the wide, tempestuous wave. 
Looks, with a shudder, to those towers. 
Where, in a few short awful hours, 
Blood, blood, in steaming tides shall run. 
Foul incense for to-morrow's sun ! 
" Where art thou, glorious stranger ! thou. 
So loved, so lost, where art thou now 1 
Foe — Gheber — infidel — whate'er 
The unhallovv'd name thou 'rt doom'd to bear, 
Still glorious — still to this fond heart 
Dear as its blood, whate'er thou art ! 
Yes — Alia, dreadful Alia ! yes — 
If there be wrong, be crime in this. 
Let the black waves that round us roll, 
Whelm me this instant, ere my soul. 
Forgetting faith, home, father, all — 
Before its earthly idol fall. 
Nor worship e'en thyself above him — 
For oh ! so wildly do I love him. 
Thy paradise itself were dim 
And joyless, if not shared with him !" 

Her hands were clasp'd — her eyes upturn'd. 
Dropping their tears like moonlight rain ; 

And, though her lip, fond raver ! burn'd 
With words of passion, bold, profane. 

Yet was there light around her brow, 

A holiness in those dark eyes, [now, — 

Which show'd — though wandering earthward 
Her spirit's home was in the skies. 

Yes — for a spirit, pure as hers. 

Is always pure, e'en while it errs ; 

As sunshine, broken in the rill, 

Though turn'd astray, is sunshine still ! 

So wholly had her mind forgot 
All thoughts but one, she heeded not 
The rising storm — the wave that cast 
A moment's midnight, as it pass'd ; 



156 



THOMAS MOORE. 



Nor heard the frequent shout, the tread 

Of gathering tumult o'er her head — 

Clash'd swords, and tongues that seem'd to vie 

With tlie rude riot of the sky. 

But hark ! — that war-whoop on the deck — 

That crash, as if each engine there, 
Mast, sails, and all, were gone to wreck, 

Mid yells and stampings of despair ! 
Merciful heav'n ! what can. it be 1 
'T is not the storm, though fearfully 
The ship has shudder'd as she rode 
O'er mountain waves — " Forgive me, God ! 
Forgive ine" — shriek'd the maid and knelt, 
Trembling all over — for she felt, 
As if her judgment hour was near; 
While crouching round, half dead with fear, 
Her handmaids clung, nor breath'd, nor stirr'd — 
When, hark ! — a second crash — a third — 
And now, as if a bolt of thunder 
Had riv'n the labouring planks asunder, 
The deck falls in — what horrors then ! 
Blood, waves, and tackle, swords and men 
Come mix'd together through the chasm ; — 
Some w^retches in their dying spasm 
Still fighting on — and some that call 
" For God and Iran !" as they fall ! 

Whose was the hand that turn'd away 
The perils of the infuriate fray, 
And snatch'd her, breathless, from beneath 
This wilderment of wreck and death 1 
She knew not — for a faintness came 
Chill o'er her, and her sinking frame, 
Amid the ruins of that hour, 
Lay, like a pale and scorched flower. 
Beneath the red volcano's shower ! 
But oh ! the sights and sounds of dread 
That shork'd her, ere her senses fled ! 
The yawning deck — the crowd that strove 
Upon the tottering planks above — 
The sail, whose fragments, shivering o'er 
The stragglers' heads, all dash'd with gore, 
Flutter'd like bloody flags — the clash 
Of sabres, and the lightning's flash 
Upon their blades, high toss'd about 
Like meteor brands — as if throughout 

The elements one fury ran. 
One general rage, that left a doubt 

Which was the fiercer, heaven or man ! 

Once too — but no — it could not be — 

'Twas fancy all — yet once she thought, 
While yet her fading eyes could see. 

High on the ruin'd deck she caught 
A glimpse of that unearthly form. 

That gl^ory of her soul — e'en then. 
Amid the whirl of wreck and storm. 

Shining above his fellow men, 
As, on some black and troublous night, 
The Star of Egypt, whose proud light, 
Never hath beam'd on those who rest 
In the White Islands of the West, 
Burns through the storm with looks of flame 
That put heaven's cloudier eyes to shame ! 
But no — 'twas but the minute's dream — 
A fantasy — and ere the scream 



Had halfway pass'd her pallid lips, 
A death-like swoon, a chill eclipse 
Of%oul and sense its darkness spread 
Around her, and she sunk, as dead ! 

How calm, how beautiful comes on 
The stilly hour, when storms are gone ; 
When warring winds have died away, 
And clouds, beneath the glancing ray, 
Melt off, and leave the land and sea 
Sleeping in bright tranquillity, — 
Fresh as if day again were born, 
Again upon the lap of morn ! 
When the light blossoms, rudely torn 
And scatter'd at the whirlwind's will, 
Hang floating in the pure air still. 
Filling it all with precious balm, 
In gratitude for this sweet calm ; 
And every drop the thunder-showers 
Have left upon the grass and flowers 
Sparkles, as 'twere that lightning-gem 
Whose liquid flame is born of them ! 

When, 'stead of one unchanging breeze, 
There blow a thousand gentle airs. 
And each a difl'erent perfume bears, — 

As if the loveliest plants and trees 
Had vassal breezes of their own 
To watch and wait on them alone. 
And waft no other breath than theirs ! 
When the blue waters rise and fall, 
In sleepy sunshine mantling all; 
And e'en that swell the tempest leaves 
Is like the full and silent heaves 
Of lovers' hearts, when newly blest, 
Too newly to be quite at rest ! 

Such was the golden hour that broke 
Upon the world when Hinda woke 
From her long trance, and heard around 
No motion but the water's sound 
Rippling against the vessel's side. 
As slow it mounted o'er the tide. — 
But where is she] — her eyes are dark, 
Are wilder'd still — is this the bark. 
The same, that from Harmozia's bay 
Bore her at morn — whose bloody way 
'The sea-dog track'd ! — no — strange and new 
Is all that meets her wondering view. 
Upon a galliot's deck she lies, 

Beneath no rich pavilion's shade, 
No plumes to fan her sleeping eyes, 

Nor jasmine on her pillow laid. 
But the rude litter, roughly spread 
With war-cloaks, is her homely bed. 
And shawl and sash, on javelins hung. 
For awning o'er her head are flung, 
Shuddering she look'd around — there lay 

A group of warriors in the sun, 
Resting their limbs, as for that day 

Their ministry of death were done. 
Some gazing on the drowsy sea, 
Lost in unconscious reverie ; 
And some, who seem'd but ill to brook 
That sluggish calm, with many a look, 
To the slack sail impatient cast, 
As loose it flagg'd around the mast. 



THOMAS MOORE. 



157 



Blest Alia ! who shall save her now 1 

There's not in all th.it warrior-band 
One Aral) sword, one turhan'd brow 

From her own faithful Moslem land. 
Their garb — the leathern belt that wraps 

Each yellow vest — that rebel hue — 
The Tartar fleece upon their caps — 

Yes — yes — her fears are all too true, 
And Heaven hath, in this dreadful hour, 
Abandon'd her to Hafed's power ; — 
Hafed, the Gheber !— at the thought 

Her very heart's blood chills within ; 
He, whom her soul was hourly taught 

To loathe, as some foul fiend of sin. 
Some minister, whom hell had sent 
To spread its blast, where'er he went. 
And fling, as o'er our earth he trod, 
His shadow betwixt man and God ! 
And she is now his captive — thrown 
In his fierce hands, alive, alone ; 
His the infuriate band she sees. 
All infidels — all enemies! 
What was the daring hope that then 
Cross'd her^ike lightning, as again, 
With boldness that despair had lent. 

She darted through that armed crowd 
A look so searching, so intent. 

That e'en the sternest warrior bow'd, 
Abash'd, when he her glances caught, 
As if he guess'd whose form they sought, 
But no — she sees him not — 'tis gone, — 
The vision, that before her shone 
Through all the maze of blood and storm, 
Is fled — 'twas but a phantom form — 
One of those passing, rainbow dreams, 
Half-light, half-shade, wiiieh fancy's beams, 
Paint on the fleeting mists that roll 
In trance or slumber round the soul ! 

But now the bark, with livelier bound, 

Scales the blue wave — the crew's in motion — 

The oars are out, and with light sound 
Break the bright mirror of the ocean, 

Scattering its brilliant fragments round. 

And now she sees — with horror sees, 

Their course is toward that mountain hold, — 

Those towers, that make her life-blood freeze. 

Where Mecca's godless enemies 

Lie, like beleagucr'd scorpions, roll'd 
In their last deadly, venomous fold ! 

Amid the illumined land and flood, 

Sunless that mighty mountain stood ; 

Save where, above its awful head. 

There shone a flaming cloud, blood-red, 

As 'twere the flag of destiny 

Hung out to mark where death would be ! 

Had her bewilder'd mind the power 

Of thought in this terrific hour. 

She well might marvel where or how 

Man's foot could scale that mountain's brow. 

Since ne'er bad Arab beard or known 

Of path but through t!io glen alone, 

But every ttiought wx lost in fear, 

When, as their bounding Imrk drew near 



The craggy base, she felt the waves, 
Hurry them toward those dismal caves 
That from the deep in windings pass, 
Beneatli the mount's volcanic mass : 
And loud a voice on deck commands 
To lower the mast and light the brands ! — 
Instantly o'er the dashing tide 
Within a cavern's mouth they glide, 
Glootny as that eternal porch. 

Through which departed spirits go ; — 
Not e'en the flare of brand and torch 

Its flickering light could further throw. 

Than the thick flood that boil'd below. 
Silent they floated — as if each 
Sat breathless, and too awed for speech 
In that dark chasm, where even sound 
Seem'd dark, — so sullenly around, 
The goblin echoes of the cave 
Mutter'd it o'er the long black wave. 
As 't were some secret of the grave ! 
But soft — they pause — the current turns 

Beneath them from its onward track ; — 
Some mighty, unseen barrier spurns 

The vexed tide, all foaming, back, 
And scarce the oar's redoubled force 
Can stem the eddy's whirling course ; 
When, hark ! — some desperate foot has sprung 
Among the rocks — the chain is flung — 
The oars are up — the grapple clings. 
And -the toss'd bark in moorings swings. 

Just then a^day-beam, through the shade. 

Broke tremulous — but, ere the maid 

Can see from whence the brightness steals, 

Upon her brow she shuddering feels 

A viewless hand, that promptly ties 

A bandage round her burning eyes ; 

While the rude litter where she lies, 

U))lifted by the wanior throng. 

O'er the steep rocks is borne along. 

Blest power of sunshine ! genial day. 

What balm, what life is in thy ray ! 

To feel thee is such real bliss. 

That had the world no joy but this. 

To sit in sunshine calm and sweet, — 

It were a world too exquisite 

For man to leave it for the gloom. 

The deep, cold shadow of the tomb! 

E'en Hinda, though she saw not where 

Or whither wound the perilous road, 
Yet knew by that awakening air. 

Which suddenly around her glow'd. 
That they had risen from darkness then, 
And breathed the sunny world again ! 

But soon this balmy freshness fled : 

For now the sleepy labyrinth led 

Throut^h damp and gloom — mid crash of boughs, 

And fall of loosen'd crags that rouse 

The leopard from his hungry sleep. 

Who, starting, thinks each crag a prey. 
And long is heard from steep to steep, 

Chasing them down their thundering way. 
The jackal's cry — the distant moan 
Of the hyajna, fierce nnd lone ; — 
And that eternal, saddening sound 
O 



158 



THOMAS MOORE. 



Of torrents in the glen beneath, 
As 'twere the ever-dark profound 

That rolls beneath the Bridge of Death ! 
All, all is fearful — e'en to see, 

To gaze on those terrific things 
She now but blindly hears, would be 

Relief to her imaginings ! 
Since never yet was shape so dread. 

But fancy, thus in darkness thrown, 
And by such sounds of horror fed. 

Could frame more dreadful of her own. 
But does she dream 1 has fear again 
Perplex'd the workings of her brain, 
Or did a voice, all music, then 
Come from the gloom, low whispering near — 
"Tremble not, love, thy Gheber's here !" 
She does not dream — all sense — all ear. 
She drinks the words, "Thy Gheber's here." 
'T was his own voice — she could not err — 

Throughout the breathing world's extent 
There was but one such voice for her, 

So kind, so soft, so eloquent ! 
Oh ! sooner shall the rose of May 

Mistake her own sweet nightingale, 
And to some meaner minstrel's lay 

Open her bosom's glowing veil, 
Than love shall ever doubt a tone, 
A breath of the beloved one ! 
Though blest, mid all her ills, to think 

She has that one beloved near. 
Whose smile, though met on ruin's brink. 

Hath power to make e'en ruin dear, — 
Yet soon this gleam of rapture, crost 
By fears for him, is chill'd and lost. 
How shall the ruthless Hafed brook 
That one of Gheber blood should look, 
With aught but curses in his eye, 
On her — a maid of Araby — 
A Moslem maid — the child of him, 

Whose bloody banner's dire success 
Hath left their altars cold and dim. 

And their fair land a wilderness! 
And, worse than all, that night of blood 

Which comes so fast — oh ! who shall stay 
The sword, that once hath tasted food 

Of Persian hearts, or turn its way ] 
What arm shall then the victim cover. 
Or from her father shield her lover ? 

« Save him, my God !" she inly cries — 
" Save him this night — and if thine eyes 

Have ever welcomed with delight 
The sinner's tears, the sacrifice 

Of sinners' hearts — guard him this night. 
And here, before thy throne, I swear 
From my heart's inmost core to tear 

Love, hope, remembrance, though they oe 
Link'd with each quivering life-string there. 

And give it bleeding all to Thee ! 
Let him but live, the burning tear, 
The sighs, so sinful, yet so dear, 
Which have been all too much his own, 
Shall from this hour be Heaven's alone. 
Youth pass'd in penitence, and age 
In long and painful pilgrimage. 



Shall leave no traces of the flame 
That wastes me now — nor shall his name 
E'er bless my lips, but when I pray 
For his dear spirit, that away 
Casting from its angelic ray 
The eclipse of earth, he too may shine 
Redeem'd, all glorious and all Thine ! 
Think — think what victory to win 
One radiant soul like his from sin ; — 
One wandering star of virtue back 
To its own native, heaven-ward track ! 
Let him but live, and both are Thine, 

Together Thine — for, blest or crost. 
Living or dead, his doom is mine ; 

And if /;e perish, both are lost !" 



The next evenin? Lalla Rnokli was entreated by her 
ladies to continue the relation of her wonderful dream ; 
but the f-;arfiil interest that hung round the fate of Hinda 
and her lover had completely renioved every trace of it 
from her mind ;— much to the disappointment of a fair 
seer or two in h'r train, who prided themselves on their 
skill in inter|)reting visions, and who had already re- 
marked, as an unlucky omen, that the princess, on the 
very morning after the dream, had worn a ailk dyed with 
the blossoms of the sorrowful tree, Nilica. 

Fadladeen, whose wrath had more than once broken 
out during the recital of some parts of tliis most heterodox 
poem, seemed at length to have made up his mind to the 
infliction ; and took his seat for the evening with all the 
patience of a martyr, while the poet continued his pro- 
fane and seditious story thus : — 

To tearless eyes and hearts at ease. 
The leafy shores and sun-bright seas. 
That lay beneath that mountain's height. 
Had been a fair, enchanting sight. 
'T was one of those ambrosial eves, 
A day of storm so often leaves 
At its calm setting — when the west 
Opens her golden bowers of rest. 
And a moist radiance from the skies 
Shoots trcmhling down, as from the eyes 
Of some meek penitent, whose last, 
Bright hours atone for dark ones past, 
And whose sweet tears o'er wrong forgiven. 
Shine, as they fall, with light from heaven ! 

'Twas stillness all — the winds that late 

Had rush'd through Kerman's almond groves. 
And shaken from her bowers of date. 

That cooling feast the traveller loves. 
Now, lull'd to languor, scarcely curl 

The Green Sea wave, whose waters gleam 
Limpid, as if her mines of pearl 

Were melted all to form the stream. 
And her fair islets, small and bright, 

With their green shores reflected there. 
Look like those Peri isles of light. 

That hang by spell-work in the air. 
But vainly did those glories burst 
On Hinda's dazzled eyes, when first 
The bandage from her brow was taken, 
And pale and awed as those who waken 
In their dark tombs — when, scowling near. 
The Searchers of the Grave appear, — 
She shuddering turn'd to read her fate 



THOMAS MOORE. 



159 



In the fierce eyes that flash'd around ; 
And saw those towers, all desolate, 

That o'er her head terrific frown'd, 
As if defying e'en the smile 
Of that soft heaven to gild their pile. 
In vain, with mingled hope and fear, 
She looks for him whose voice so dear 
Had come, like music, to her ear — 
Strange, mocking dream ! again 'tis fled. 
And oh ! tiie shoots, the pangs of dread 
That through her inmost bosom run. 

When voices from without proclaim 
" Hafed, the chief!" — and, one by one, 

The warriors shout that fearful name ! 
He comes — the rock resounds his tread — 
How shall she dare to lift her head. 
Or meet those eyes, whose scorching glare 
Not Yemen's boldest sons can bear ? 
In whose red beam, the Moslem tells, 
Such rank and deadly lustre dwells, 
As in those hellish fires that light 
The mandrake's charnel leaves at night ! 
How shall she bear that voice's tone, 
At whose loud battle-cry alone 
Whole squadrons oft in panic ran, 
Scatter'd, like some vast caravan, 
When, strctch'd at evening, round the well. 
They hear the thirsting tiger's yell 1 

Breathless she stands, with eyes cast down, 
Shrinking beneath the fiery frown, 
Which, fancy tells her, from that brovy 
Is flashing o'er her fiercely now ; 
And shuddering, as she hears the tread 

Of his retiring warrior band. — 
Never was pause so full of dread ; 

Till Ha.'bJ, with a trembling hand, 
Took hers, and, leaning o'er her, said, 
" Hinda !" — tliat word was all he spoke, 
And 'twas enough — the sliriek that broke 

From her full bosom told the rest. — 
Panting with terror, joy, surprise, 
The maid but lifts her wondering eyes 

To hide them on her Gheber's breast ! 
'T is he, 't is he — the man of blood, 
The fellest of the fire-fiend's brood, 
Hafed, the demon of the fight, 
Whose voice unnerves, whose glances blight,- 
Is her own loved Gheber, mild 
And glorious as when first he smiled 
In her lone tower, and left such beams 
Of his pure eye to light her dreams. 
That she believed her bower had given 
Rest to so.aie wanderer from heaven ! 

Moments there are, and this was one, 
Snatch'd like a minute's gleam of sun 
Amid the black simoom's eclipse — 

Or like those verdant spots that bloom 
Around the crater's burning lips. 

Sweetening the very edge of doom ! 
The past — the future — all that fate 
Can bring of dark or desperate 
Around such hours, but makes them cast 
Intenser radiance while they last ! 



E'en he, this youth — though dimm'd and gone 

Each star of hope that cheer'd him on — 

His glories lost — his cause bctray'd — 

Iran, his dear-loved country, made 

A land of carcasses and slaves. 

One dreary waste of chains and graves! 

Himself but lingering, dead at heart. 
To see the last, long-struggling breath 

Of liberty's great soul depart, 

Then lay him down, and share her death — 

E'en he, so sunk in wretchedness, 

With doom still darker gathering o'er him, 

Yet, in this moment's pure caress, 

In the mild eyes that shone before him, 
Beaming that blest assurance, worth 
All other transports known on earth. 
That he was loved — well, warmly loved — 
Oh ! in this precious hour he proved 
How deep, how thorough-felt the glow 
Of rapture, kindling out of wo ; — 
How exquisite one single drop 
Of bliss, thus sparkling to the top 
Of misery's cup — how keenly quaff'd, 
Though death must follow on the draught ! 
She too, while gazing on those eyes 
Th.at sink into her soul so deep. 
Forgets all fears, all miseries, 

Or feels them like the wretch in sleep, 
Whom fancy cheats into a smile. 
Who dreams of joy, and sobs the while ! 

The mighty ruins where they stood, 

Upon the mount's high, rocky verge. 
Lay open towards the ocean flood. 

Where lightly o'er the illumined surge 
Many a fair bark, that, all the day, 
Had lurk'd in sheltering creek or bay, 
Now bounded on and gave their sails, 
Yet dripping, to the evening gales ; 
Like eagles, when the storm is done, 
Spreading their wet wings in the sun. 
The beauteous clouds, though daylight's star 
Had sunk behind the hills of Lar, 
Were still with lingering glories bright, — 
As if to grace the gorgeous west. 

The spirit of departing light 
That eve had left its sunny vest 

Behind him, ere he wing'd his flight. 
Never was scene so form'd for love ! 
Beneath them waves of crystal move 
In silent swell — heaven glows above, 
And their pure hearts, to transport given, 
Swell like the wave, and glow like heaven. 

But ah ! too so in that dream is past — 

Again, again her fear returns; — 
Night, dreadful night, is gathering fast, 

More faintly the horizon burns. 
And every rosy tint that lay 
On the smooth sea hath died away. 
Hastily to the darkening skies 
A glance she casts — then wildly cries, 
"At night, he said — and, look, 'tis near — 

Fly, fly — if yet thou lovest me, fly — 
Soon will his murderous band be here, 

And I shall see thee bleed and die. — 



160 



THOMAS MOORE. 



Hush ! — heard'st thou not the tramp of men 
Sounding from yonder fearful glen 1 — 
Perhaps e'en now they climb the wood — 

Fly, fly — though still the west is bright, 
He'll come — oh ! yes — he wants thy blood — 

I know him — he'll not wait for night!" 

In terrors e'en to agony 

She clings around the wondering chief; — 
" Alas, poor wilder'd maid ! to me 

Thou owest this raving trance of grief. 
Lost as I am, nought ever grew 
Beneath my shade but perish'd too — 
My doom is like the Dead Sea air, 
And nothing lives that enters there ! 
Why were our barks together driven 
Beneath this morning's furious heaven ? 
Why, when I saw the prize that chance 

Had thrown into my desperate arms, — 
When, casting but a single glance 

Upon thy pale and prostrate charms, 
I vow'd (though watching viewless o'er 

Thy safety through that hour's alarms) 
To meet the unmanning sight no more — 
Why have I broke that heart-wrung vow 1 
Why weakly, madly met thee now ] — 
Start not — that noise is but the shock 

Of torrents through yon valley hurl'd — 
Dread nothing here — upon this rock 

We stand above the jarring world, 
Alike beyond its hope — its dread — 
In gloomy safety, like the dead ! 
Or, could e'en earth and hell unite 
In league to storm this sacred height, 
Fear nothing thou — myself, to-night, 
And each o'erlooking stars that dwells 
Near God, will be thy sentinels ; 
And, ere to-morrow's dawn shall glow, 

Back to thy sire " 

" To-morrow ! — no" — 
The maiden scream'd — " thou 'It never see 
To-morrow's sun — death, death will be 
The night-cry through each reeking tower, 
Unless we fly, ay, fly this hour ! 
Thou art betray'd — some wretch who knew 
That dreadful glen's mysterious clew — 
Nay, doubt not — by yon stars 'tis true — 
Hath sold thee to my vengeful sire ; 
This morning, with that smile so dire 
He wears in joy, he told me all. 
And stamp'd in triumph through our hall, 
As though thy heart already beat 
Its last life-throb beneath his feet ! 
Good heaven, how little dream'd I then 

His victim was my own loved youth ! — 
Fly — send — let some one watch the glen — 

By all my hopes of heaven 'tis truth !" 

Oh ! colder than the wind that freezes 
Founts, that but now in sunshine play'd, 

Is that congealing pang which seizes 
The trusting bosom, when betray'd. 

He felt it — deeply felt — and stood, 

As if the tale had frozen his blood. 
So amazed and motionless was he ; — 

Like one whom sudden spells enchant, 



Or some mute, marble habitant 

Of the still halls of Ishmonie ! 
But soon the painful chill was o'er. 
And his great soul, herself once more, 
Look'd from his brow in all the rays 
Of her best, happiest, grandest days ! 
Never, in moment most elate. 

Did that high spirit loftier rise ; — 
While bright, serene, determinate. 

His looks are lifted to the skies, 
As if the signal lights of fate 

Were shining in those awful eyes ! 
'T is come — his hour of martyrdom 
In Iran's sacred cause is come ; 
And though his life hath pass'd away 
Like lightning on a stormy day, 
Yet shall his death-hour leave a track 

Of glory, permanent and bright. 
To which the brave of aftertimes, 
The suffering brave shall long look back 

With proud regret, — and by its light. 

Watch through the hours of slavery's night 
For vengeance on the oppressor's crimes ! 
This rock, his monument aloft. 

Shall speak the tale to many an age ; 
And hither bards and heroes oft 

Shall come in secret pilgrimage. 
And bring their warrior sons, and tell 
The wondering boys where Hafed fell. 
And swear them on those lone remains 
Of their lost country's ancient fanes, 
Never — while breath of life shall live 
Within them — never to forgive 
The accursed race, whose ruthless chain 
Hath left on Iran's neck a stain. 
Blood, blood alone can cleanse again I 

Such are the sweUing thoughts that now 
Enthrone themselves on Hafed's brow : 
And ne'er did Saint of Issa gaze 

On the red wreath, for martyrs twined. 
More proudly than the youth surveys 

That pile, which through the gloom behind, 
Half-lighted by the altar's fire. 
Glimmers, — his destined funeral pyre ! 
Heap'd by his own, his comrade's hands, 

Of every wood of odorous breath. 
There, by the Fire-god's shrine it stands, 

Ready to fold in radiant death 
The few still left of those who swore 
To perish there, when hope was o'er— 
The few, to whom that couch of flame. 
Which rescues them from bonds and shame, 
Is sweet and welcome as the bed 
For their own infant Prophet spread. 
When pitying Heaven to roses turn'd 
The death-flames that beneath him burn'd ! 

With watchfulness the maid attends 

His rapid glance, where'er it bends — 

Why shoots his eyes such awful beams ! 

What plans he now 1 what thinks or dreams 1 

Alas ! why stands he musing here. 

When every moment teems with fear? 

" Hafed, my own beloved lord," 

She kneeling cries — « first, last adored ! 



THOMAS MOORE. 



161 



If in that soul thou 'st ever felt 

Half what thy lips irapassion'd swore, 
Here, on my knees, that never knelt 

To any but their God before, 
I pray thee, as thou lovest nie, fly — 
Now, now — ere yet their blades are nigh. 
Oh haste — the bark that bore me hither 

Can waft us o'er yon darkening sea 
East — west — alas, I care not whither, 
So thou art safe, and I with tliee ! 
Go where we will, this hand in thine, 

Those eyes before me smiling thus. 
Through good and ill, through storm and shine. 

The world 's a world of love for us ! 
On some calm, blessed sliore we'll dwell, 
Where 'tis- no crime to love too well; — 
Where thu^ to worship tenderly 
An erring child of light like thee, 
Will not be sin — or, if it be. 
Where we may weep our faults away, 
Together kneeling, night and day. 
Thou, for my sake, at Alla's shrine, 
And I — at any God's for thine !" 

Wildly those passionate words she spoke — 

Then hung her head, and wept for shame, 
Sobbing, as if a heart-string broke 

With every deep-heaved sob that came. 

While he, young, warm — oh ! wonder not 
Tf, for a moment, pride and fame, 
His oath — his cause — that shrine of flame. 

And Iran's self are all forgot 
For her whom at his feet he sees, 
Kneeling in speechless agonies. 
No, blame him not, if hope awhile 
Dawn'd in his soul, and threw her smile 
O'er hours to come — o'er days and nights, 
Wing'd with those precious, pure delights 
Which she, who bends all beauteous there, 
Was born to kindle and to share ! 
A tear or two, which, as he bow'd 

To raise the suppliant, trembling stole, 
First warn'd him of this dangerous cloud 

Of softness passing o'er his soul. 
Starting, he brush'd the drops away, 
Unworthy o'er that cheek to stray ; — 
Like one who, on the morn of fight. 
Shakes from his sword the dews of night. 
That had but dimm'd, not stain'd its light. 

Yet, though suhdned the unnerving thrill, 
Its warmth, its weakness linger'd still 

So touching in each look and tone. 
That the fond, fearing, hoping maid 
Half counted on the flight she pray'd, 

Half thought the hero's soul was grown 

As soft, as yielding as her own ; 
And smiled and bless'd him, while he said, — 
" Yes — if there be some hap[>ier spliere, 
Where fadeless truth like ours is dear — 
If there be any land of rest 

For tho.^e who love and ne'er forget, 
Oh ! comfort thee — for safe and blest 

We'll meet in that calm region yet!" 

Scarce had she time to ask her heart 
If good or ill these words impart. 



When the roused youth impatient flew 
To the tower-wall, where, high in view, 
A ponderous sea-horn hung, and blew 
A signal, deep and dread as those 
The storm-fiend at his rising blows. — 
Full well his chieftains, sworn and true 
Through life and death, that signal knew ; 
For 'twas the appointed warning blast. 
The alarm to tell when hope was past, 
And the tremendous death-die cast ! 
And there, upon the mouldering tower, 
Hath hung this sea-horn many an hour, 
Ready to sound o'er land and sea 
That dirge-note of the brave and free. 

They came — his chieftains at the call 
Came slowly round, and with them all — 
Alas, how few ! the worn remains 
Of those who late o'er Kerman's plains 
Went gayly prancing to the clash 

Of Moorish zel and tymbalon. 
Catching new hope from every flash 

Of their long lances in the sun — 
And, as their coursers charged the wind, 
And the wide ox-tails stream'd behind, 
Looking, as if the steeds they rode 
Were wing'd, and every clrlef a god ! 
How fillen, how altcr'd now ! how wan 
Each scarr'd and faded visage shone. 
As round the burning shrine they came; — v, 

How deadly was the glare it cast. 
As mute they paused before the flame 

To light their torches as they pass'd ! 
'T was silence all — the youth had plann'd 
The duties of his soldier-band ; 
And each determined brow declares 
His faithful chieftains well know theirs. 

But minutes speed — night gems the skies — 
And oh how soon, ye blessed eyes, 
Tha,t look from heaven, ye may behold 
Sights that will turn your star-fires cold ! 
Breathless with awe, impatience, hope, 
The maiden sees the veteran group 
Her litter silently prepare. 

And lay it at her trembling feet; — 
And now the youth, with gentle care. 

Hath placed her in the shelter'd seat, 
And press'd her hand — that lingering press 

Of hands, that for the last time sever ; 
Of hearts, whose pulse of happiness. 

When that hold breaks, is dead for ever. 
And yet to her this sad caress 

Gives hope — so fondly hope can err ! 
'T was joy, she thought, joy's mute excess — 

Their happy flight's dear harbinger ; 
'T was warmth — assurance — tenderness — 

'T was any thing but leaving lier. 

" Haste, haste !" she cried, " the clouds grow dark, 
But still, ere night, we'll reach the bark ; 
And, by to-morrow's dawn — oh bliss ! 

With thee upon the sun-!)right deep, 
Far ofT, I'll but remember this, 

As some dark vanish'd dream of sleep ! 
o2 



And thou " but ah ! — he answers not — 

Good Heav'n ! — and does she go alone 1 
She now has reach'd that dismal spot, 

Where, some hours since, his voice's tone 
Had come to soothe her fears and ills, 
Sweet as the Angel Israfii's, 
When ever)' leaf on Eden's tree 
Is trembling to his minstrelsy — 
Yet now — oh now, he is not nigh — 

" Hafed ! my Hafed !— if it be 
Thy will, thy doom tliis night to die, 

Let me but stay to die with thee, 
And I will bless thy loved name, 
Till the last life-breath leave this fra?ne. 
Oh ! let our lips, our cheeks be laid 
But near each other while they fade: 
liet us but mix our parting breaths. 
And I can die ten thousand deaths ! 
You to 3, who hurry me away 
So cruelly, one moment stay — 

Oh ! stay — one moment is not much ; 
He yet may come — for kirn I pray — 
Hafod ! dear Hafed !"— All the way 

In wik\ lamentings, that would touch 
A heart of stone, she shriek'd his name 
To the dark woods — no Hafed came ; — 
No — hapless pair — you've look'd your last; 

Your hearts should botli have broken then: 
The dream is o'er — your doom is cast — 

You '11 never meet on earth again ! 

Alas f )r him, who hears her cries ! 

Still half-way down the sleep he stands, 
Watching with fix'^tl and feverish eyes 

The glimmer of those burning brands, 
That down the rocks, with mournful ray, 
Light all he loves on earth away I 
Hopeless as they who, far at sea. 

By the cold moon have just consign'd 
The corse of one, loved tenderly, 

To the bleak flood they leave behind ; 
And on the deck still lingering stay, 
And long look back, with sad delay, 
To watch the moonlight on the wave, 
7'hat ripples o'er that cheerless grave. 
Bat see — he starts — what heard he then 1 
That dreadful shout ! across the glen 
From the land side it comes, and loud 
Rings through the chasm ; as if the crowd 
Of fearful things, that haunt that dell. 
Its Gholes and Dives and shapes of hell 
Had all in one dread howl broke out, 
So loud, so terrible that shout ! 

They come — the Moslems come !" he cries, 
His proud soul mounting to his eyes — 
" Now, spirits of the brave, who roam 
Enfranchised through yon starry dome, 
Rejoice — for souls of kindred fire 
Are on the wing to join your choir I" 
He said — and, light as bridegrooms bound 

To their young loves, reclimb'd the steep 
And gain'd the shrine — his chiefs stood round — 

Their swords, as with instinctive leap, 
Together, at that cry accurst. 
Had from their sheaths, like sunbeams, burst. 



And hark ! again — again it rings ; 

Near and more near its echoings 

Peal through the chasm — oh ! who that then 

Had seen those listening warrior-men. 

With their swords grasp'd, their eyes of flame 

Turn'd on their chief — could doubt the shame, 

The indignant shame with which they thrill. 

He read their thoughts — they were his own — 

" What ! while our arms can wield these blades, 
Shall we die tamely 1 die alone? 

Without one victim to our shades. 
One Moslem heart where, buried deep, 
The sabre from its toil may sleep ? 
No — God of Iran's burning skies ! 
Thou scorn'st the inglorious sacrifice. 
No — though of all earth's hope bereft. 
Life, swords, and vengeance still are left. 
We'll make yon valley's reeking caves 

Live in the awe-struck minds of men, 
Till tyrants shudder, when their slaves 

Tell of the Gheber's bloody glen. 
Follow, brave hearts ! — this pile remains 
Our refuge still from life and chains. 
But his the best, the holiest bed. 
Who sinks entomb'd in Moslem dead !" 
Down the precipitous rocks they sprung. 
While vigour, more than human, strung 
Each arm and heart. The exulting foe 
Still through the dark defiles below, 
Track'd by his torches' lurid fire, 

Wound slow, as through Golconda's vale 
The mighty serpent, in his ire. 

Glides on with glittering, deadly trail. 
No torch the Ghebers need — so well 
They know each mystery of the dell, 

So oft have, in their wanderings, 
Cross'd the wild race that round them dwell, 
The very tigers from iheir delves 

liook out, and let tttem pass, as things 
Untamed and fearless as themselves ! 
There was a deep ravine, that lay 
Yet darkling in the Moslem's way , — 
Fit spot to make invaders rue 
The many fall'n before the few. 
The torrents from that morning's sky 
Had fill'd the narrow chasm breast-high, 
And, on each side, aloft and wild. 
Huge cliffs and topplings crags were piled. 
The guards, with which young freedom lines 
The pathways to her mountain shrines. 
Here, at this pass, the scanty band 
Of Iran's last avengers stand — 
Here wait, in silence like the dead. 
And listen for the Moslem's tread 
So anxiously, the carrion-bird 
Above them flaps his wings unheard ! 

They come — that plunge into the water 
Gives signal for the work of slaughter. 
Now, Ghebers, now — if ere your blades 

Had point or prowess, prove them now — 
Wo to the file that foremost wades I 

They come — a falchion greets each brow, 
And, as they tumble, trunk on trunk. 
Beneath the gory waters sunk. 



THOMAS MOORE. 



163 



Still o'er their drowning bodies press 
New victims quick and numberless ; 
Till scarce an arm in Hafcd's band, 

So fierce their toil, hath power to stir, 
But listless from each crimson hand 

The sword hangs, clogg'd with massacre. 

Never was horde of tyrants mot 
With bloodier welcome — never yet 
To patriot vengeance hath the sword 
More terrilile libations pour'd ! 
All up the dreary, long ravine, 
By the red, murky glimmer seen 
Of half-quench'd brands, that o'er the flood 
Lie scatter'd round and burn in blood, 
What ruin glares ! what carnage swims ! 
Heads, blazing turbans, quivering limbs, 
Lost swords that, dropp'd from many a hand, 
In that thick pool of slaughter stand ; — 
Wretches who wading, half on fire 

From the toss'd brands that round them fly, 
'Twixt flood and flame in shrieks expire; 

And some who, grasp'd by those that die, 
Sink woundless with them, smother'd o'er 
In their dead brethren's gushing gore ! 

But vainly hundreds, thousands bleed. 
Still hundreds, thousands more succeed; — 
Countless as towards some flame at night 
The north's dark insects wing their flight, 
And quench or perish in its light. 
To this terrific spot they pour — 
Till, bridged with Moslem bodies o'er. 
It bears aloft their slippery tread. 
And o'er the dying and the dead. 
Tremendous causeway ! on they pass. — 
Then, hapless Ghebers, then, alas. 

What hope was left for you ? for you, 
Whose yet warm pile of sacrifice 
Is smoking in tiieir vengeful eyes — 

Whose swords how keen, how fierce they knew, 

And burn with shame to find how few. 
Crush'd down by that vast multitude. 
Some found their graves where first they stood; 
While some with hardier struggle died, 
And stil! fought on by Hafed's side, 
Who, fronting to the foe, trod back 
Towards the high towers his gory track ; 
And, as a lion, swept away 

By sudden swell of Jordan's pride 
From the wild covert where he lay. 

Long battles with the o'erwhelming tide, 
So fought he back with fierce delay. 
And kept both foes and fate at bay. 

But whither now ? their track is lost. 

Their prey escaped — guide, torches gone — 

By torrent-beds and labyrinths crost. 
The scatter'd crowd rush blindly on — 

" Curse on those tardy lights that wind," 

They panting cry, " so far behind — 

Oh for a bloodhound's precious scent 

To track the way the (Jheber went !" 

Vain wish — confusedly along 

They rush, more desperate as more wrong : 

Till, wilder'd by the far-otT lights. 

Yet glittering up those gloomy heights. 



Their footing, mazed and lost, they miss, 

And down the darkling precipice 

Are dash'd into the deep abyss : 

Or midway hang, impaled on rocks, 

A banquet, yet alive, for flocks 

Of ravening vultures — while the dell 

Re-echoes with each horrid yell. 

Those sounds — the last, to vengeance dear, 
That e'er shall ring in Hafed's ear, — 
Now reach him, as aloft, alone. 
Upon the steep way breathless thrown, 
He lay beside his reeking blade. 

Resign 'd, as if life's task were o'er, 
Its last blood-otfering amply paid. 

And Iran's self could claim no more. 
One only thought, one lingering beam 
Now broke across his dizzy dream 
Of pain and weariness — 't was she. 

His heart's pure planet, shining yet 
Above the waste of memory. 

When all life's other lights were set. 
And never to his mind before. 
Her image such enchantment wore. 
It seem'd as if each thought that stain'd, 

Each fear that chill'd their loves was past, 
And not one cloud of earth remain'd 

Between him and her glory cast; — 
As if to charms, before so bright. 

New grace from other worlds was given, 
And his soul saw her by the light 

Now breaking o'er itself from heaven ! 

A voice spoke near him — 't was the tone 

Of a loved friend, the only one 

Of all his warriors left with life 

From that short night's tremendous strife. — 

" And must we then, my chief, die here T — 

Foes round us, and the shrine so near?" 

These words have roused the last remains 

Of life within him — "what ! not yet 
Beyond the reach of Moslem chains?" — 

The thought could make e'en death forget 
His icy bondage — with a bound 
He springs, all bleeding, from the ground, 
And grasps his comrade's arm, now grown 
E'en feebler, heavier than his own, 
And faintly up the pathway leads. 
Death gaining on each step he treads. 
Speed them, thou God, who heard'st their vow ? 
They mount — they bleed — oh save them now — 
The crass are red they 've clamber'd o'er, 
The rock-weeds dripping with their gore — 
Thy blade too, Hafed, false at length. 
Now breaks beneath thy tottering strength- 
Haste, haste — the voices of the foe 
Come near and nearer from below — 
One effort more — thank Heaven ! 'tis past. 
They 've gain'd the topmost steep at last 
And now they touch the temple's walls, 

Now Hafed sees the Fire divine — 
When, lo ! his weak, worn comrade falls 

Dead on the threshold of the shrine. 
"Alas, brave soul, too quickly fled! 

And must I leave thee withering here. 



164 



THOMAS MOORE. 



The sport of every ruffian's tread, 

Tlie mark for every coward's spear] 
No, by yoa altar's sacred beams I" 
He cries, and with a strensrth that seems 
Not of this world, uplifts the frame 
Of the fallen chief, and towards the flame 
Bears him alonj; — with death-damp hand 

The corpse upon the pyre he lays. 
Then liglits the consecrated brand, 

And fires the pile, whose sudden blaze, 
Like lightning bursts o'er Oman's sea. — 

" Now, freedom's God ! I come to Thee," 
The youth exclaims, and with a smile 
Of triumph vaulting on the pile, 
In that last effjrt, ere the fires 
Have harm'd one glorious limb, expires ! 

What shriek was that on Oman's tide 1 

It came from yonder drifting bark, 
That just has caught upon her side 

The death-light — and again is dark. 
It is the boat — ah, why delay "d? — 
That bears the wretched Moslem maid 
Confided to the wat:'hful care 

Of a small veteran band, with whom 
Their generous chieftain would not snare 

The secret of his final doom ; 
But hoped when Hinda, safe and free, 

Was render'd to her father's eyes. 
Their pardon, full and prompt, would be 

Tlie ransom of so dear a prize. 
Unconscious, thus, of Hafed's fate. 
And proud to guard their beauteous freight, 
Scarce had they clear'd the surfy waves 
That foam around those frightful caves, 
When the curst war-whoops, known so well, 
Come echoing from the distant dell — 
Sudden each oar, upheld and still, 

Hung dripping o'er the vessel's side. 
And, driving at the current's will. 

They rock'd along the whispering tide, 
While every eye, in mute dismay. 

Was toward that fatal mountain turn'd, 
Where the dim altar's quivering ray 

As yet all lone and tranquil burn'd. 
Oh! 'tis not, Hinda, in the power 

Of fancy's most terrilic touch, 
To paint thy pangs in that dread hour — 

Thy silent agony — 't was such 
As those who feel could paint too well, 
But none e'er felt and lived to tell ! 
'Twas not alone the dreary state 
Of a lorn spirit, crush 'd by fate, 
When, though no more remains to dread. 

The panic chill will not depart ; — 
When, though the inmate hope be dead, 

Her ghost still haunts the mouldering heart. 
No — pleasures, hopes, alfections gone. 
The wretch may bear, and yet live on, 
Like things within the cold rock found 
Alive, when all's congeal'd around. 
But there's a blank repose in this, 
A calm stagnation, that were bliss 
To the keen, burning, harrowing pain. 
Now felt through all thy breast and brain — 



That spasm of terror, mute, intense. 
That breathless, agonized suspense. 
From whose hot throb, whose deadly aching 
The heart hath no relief but breaking ! 

Calm is the wave — heaven's brilliant lights, 

Reflected dance beneath the prow ; — 
Time was when, on such lovely nights. 

She who is there, so desolate now. 
Could sit all cheerful, though alone. 

And ask no happier joy than seeing 
That star-light o'er the waters thrown — 
No joy but that to make her blest. 

And the fresh, buoyant sense of being 
That bounds in youth's yet careless breast — 
Itself a star, not borrowing light. 
But in its own glad essence bright. 
How different now ! — but, hark, again 
The yell of havoc rings — brave men ! 
In vain, with beating hearts, ye stand 
On the bark's edge — in vain each hand 
Half draws the falchion from its sheath; 

All's o'er — in rust your blades may lie: 
He, at whose word they 've scatter'd death. 

E'en now, this night, himself must die ! 
Well may ye look ti yon dim tower, 

And ask, and wondering guess what means 
The battle-cry at this dead hour — 

Ah I she could tell you — she, who leans 
Unheeded there, pale, sunk, aghast. 
With brow against the dew-cold mast — 

Too well she knows — her more than life. 
Her soul's first idol and its last, 

Lies bleeding in that murderous strife. 
But see — what moves upon the height] 
Some signal ! — 'tis a torch's light. 

What bodes its solitary glare ] 
In gasping silence toward the shrine 
All eyes are turn'd — thine, Hinda, thine 

Fix their last tailing life-beam there. 
'T was but a moment — fierce and high 
The death-pile blazed into the sky, 
And far away o'er rock and flood 

Its melancholy radiance sent ; 
While Hafed, like a vision, stood 
Reveal'd before the burning pyre, 
Tall, shadowy, like a Spirit of Fire, 

Shrined in its own grand element ! 
"'Tis he !" — the shuddering maid exclaims, — 

But, while she speaks, he's seen no more; 
High burst in air the funeral flames. 

And Iran's hopes and hers are o'er ! 

One wild, heart-broken shriek she gave — 
Then sprung, as if to reach the blaze, 
Where still she fix'd her dying gaze. 
And, gazing, sunk into the wave, — 
Deep, deep, — where never care or pain 
Shall reach her innocent heart again ! 



Fahewell — farewell to thee, Araby's daughter f 
(Thus warbled a Peri beneath the dark sea :) 

No pearl ever lay, under Oman's green water. 
More pure in its shell than thy spirit in thee. 



THOMAS MOORE. 



165 



Oh ! fair as the sea-flower close to thee growing, 
How light was thy heart till love's witchery came, 

Like the wind of the south o'er a summer lute 
blowing, 
And hush'd all its music and wither'd its frame ! 

But long, upon Araby's green sunny highlands. 
Shall maids and their lovers remember the doom 

Of her, who lies sleeping among the Pearl Islands, 
With nought but the sea-star to light up her touib. 

And still, when the merry date-season is burning, 
And calls to the palm-groves the young and the 
old. 

The happiest there, from their pastime returning. 
At sunset, will weep when thy story is told. 

The young village maid, when with flowers she 
dresses 

Her dark, flowing hair for some festival day, 
Will think of thy fate till, neglecting her tresses, 

She mournfully turns from the mirror away. 

Nor shall Iran, beloved of her hero ! forget thee, — 
Though tyrants watch over her tears as they start. 

Close, close by the side of that hero she '11 set thee, 
Embalm'd in the innermost shrine of her heart. 

Farewell — be it ours to embellish thy pillow 
With every thing beauteous that grows in the 
deep ; 

Each flower of the rock and each gem of the billow 
Shall sweeten thy bed and illumine thy sleep. 

Around thee shall glisten the loveliest amber 
That ever the sorrowing sea-bird has wept; 

With many a shell, in whose hoUow-wreath'd 
chamber 
We, Peris of Ocean, by moonlight have slept. 

We'll dive where the gardens of coral lie darkling, 
And plant all the rosiest stems at thy head ; 

We'll seek where the sands of the Caspian are 
sparkling. 
And gather their gold to strew over thy bed. 

Farewell — farewell — until pity's sweet fountain 
Is lost in the hearts of the fair and the brave. 

They'll weep for the chieftain who died on that 

mountain, [wave. 

They 'II weep for the maiden who sleeps in this 



Thus freedom now so seldom wakes, 
The only throb she gives. 

Is when some heart indignant breaks, 
To show that still she lives ! 



THE HAPvP THAT OXCE THROUGH 
TARA'S HALLS. 

The harp that once through Tara's halls 

The soul of music shed. 
Now hangs as n\ute on Tara's walls 

As if that soul were fled. 
So sleeps the pride of former days, 

So glory's thrill is o'er, 
And hearts that once beat high for praise 

Now feel that pulse no more ! 

No more to chiefs and ladies bright 

The harp of Tara swells ; 
The chord alone, that breaks at night, 

Its tale of ruin tells. 



EVELEEN'S BOWER. 

Oh ! weep for the hour, 

When to Eveleen's bower 
The lord of the valley with false vows came ; 

The moon hid her light 

From the heavens that night, [shame. 
And wept behind her clouds o'er the maiden's 

The clouds passed soon 

From the chaste cold moon. 
And heaven smiled again with her vestal flame; 

But none will see the day 

When the clouds shall pass away 
Which that dark hour left upon Eveleen's fame. 

The white snow lay 

On the narrow pathway 
Where the lord of the valley cross'd over the moor ; 

And many a deep print 

On the white snow's tint 
Show'd the track of his footstep to Eveleen's (3oor. 

The next sun's ray 

Soon melted away 
Every trace on the path where the false lord came ; 

But there's a light above 

Which alone can remove 
That stain upon the snow of fair Eveleen's fame. 



ALL THAT'S BRIGHT MUST FADE. 

At.t. that's bright must fade, — 

The brightest still the fleetest; 
All that's sweet was made 

But to be lost when sweetest. 
Stars that shine and fall ; — 

The flower that drops in springing ; — 
These, alas ! are types of all 

To which our hearts are clinging 
All that's bright must fade, — 

The brightest still the fleetest ; 
All that's sweet was made 

But to be lost when sweetest ! 

Who would seek or prize 

Delights that end in aching 1 
Who would trust to ties 

That every hour are breaking ? 
Better far to be 

In utter darkness lying, 
Than be blest with light, and see 

That light for ever flying. 
All that's bright must fade, — 

The brightest still the fleetest; 
All that's sweet was made 

But to be lost when sweetest ! 



166 



THOMAS MOORE. 



OFT, IN THE STILLY NIGHT. 

Oft, in the stilly night, 

Ere slumber's chain has bound me, 
Fond memory brings the light 
Of other days around me ; 
The smiles, the tears, 
Of boyhood's years. 
The words of love then spoken ; 
The eyes that shone, 
Now dimm'd and gone, 
The cheerful hearts now broken ! 
Thus, in the stilly night. 

Ere slumber's chain has bound me, 
Sad memory brings the light 
Of other days around me. 

When I remember all 

The friends, so link'd together, 
I 've seen around me fall, 

Like leaves in wintry weather; 
I feel like one 
Who treads alone. 
Some banquet hall deserted. 
Whose lights are fled. 
Whose garland "s dead, 
And all but he departed ! 
Thus, in the stilly night. 

Ere slumber's chain has bound me. 
Sad memory brings the light 
Of other davs around me. 



SACRED SONG. 

The turf shall be my fragrant shrine ; 
My temple, Lord ! that arch of thine ; 
My censer's breath the mountain airs. 
And silent thoughts my only prayers. 

My choir shall be the moonlight waves. 
When murmuring homeward to their caves. 
Or when the stillness of the sea, 
Even more than music, breathes of Thee ! 

I'll seek, by day, some glade unknown, 
All light and silence, like thy throne ! 
And the pale stars shall he, at night, 
The only eyes that watch my rite. 

Thy heaven, on which 'tis bliss to look. 
Shall be my pure and shining book. 
When I shall read, in words of flame. 
The glories of thy wondrous name. 

I '11 read thy anger in the rack 

That clouds awhile the day-beam's track ; 

Thy mercy in the azure hue 

Of sunny brightness breaking through ! 

There's nothing bright, above, below. 
From flowers that bloom to stars that glow. 
But in its light my soul can see 
Some feature of the Deity ! 

There 's nothing dark, below, above. 
But in its gloom I trace thy love, 
And meekly wait that moment when 
Thy touch shall turn all bright again ! 



HAS SORROW THY YOUNG DAYS 
SHADED ? 



Has sorrow thy yonng days shaded, 

As clouds o'er the morning fleet 1 
Too fast have those young days faded. 

That even in sorrow were sweet. 
Does Time, with his cold wing, wither 

Each feeling that once was dear ? 
Come, child of misfortune ! hither, 

I '11 weep with thee, tear for tear. 

Has love to that soul so tender, 

Been like our Lagenian mine ? 
Where sparkles of golden splendour 

All over the surface shine. 
Butif in pursuit we go deeper. 

Allured by the gleam that shone. 
Ah ! false as the dream of the sleeper, 

Like love, the bright ore is gone. 

Has hope, like the bird in the story 

That flitted from tree to tree 
With the talisman's glittering glory — 

Has hope been that bird to thee 1 
On branch after branch alighting, 

The gem did she still display ; 
And, when nearest and most inviting, 

Then waft the fair gem away ] 

If thus the sweet hours have fleeted. 

When sorrow herself look'd bright; 
If thus the fond hope has cheated, 

That led thee along so light ; 
If thus, too, the cold world wither 

Each feeling that once was dear, — 
Come, child of misfortune ! hither, 

I'll weep with thee tear for tear. 



OH NO ! NOT EVEN WHEN FIRST WE 
LOVED. 



On, no ! — not e'en when first we loved, 

V/ert thou as dear as now thou art ; 
Thy beauty then my senses moved. 

But now thy virtues bind my heart. 
What was but passion's sigh before. 

Has since been turn'd to reason's vow ; 
And though I then might love thee more, 

Trust me, I love thee better now ! 

Although my heart, in earlier youth. 

Might kindle with more wild desire ; 
Believe me, it has gain'd in truth 

Much more than it has lost in fire. 
The flame now warms my inmost core 

That then but sparkled on my brow ; 
And though I seem'd to love thee more. 

Yet, oh, I love thee better now !" 



CALEB C. COLTON. 



The author of " Lacon" was educated at 
Cambridge, where, in 1804, being then in the 
twenty-fifth year of his age, he obtained a fel- 
lowship. He took orders, and was presented 
with the livings of Tiverton, Kew and Peter- 
sham. These, with his fellowship, produced 
a liberal income, but his necessities or eccen- 
tricities caused him to reside in an obscure 
garret, where he wrote the most celebrated of 
[ his works, " Lacon, or Many Things in Few 
Words." By this he acquired considerable 
reputation, and his disappearance soon after, 
on the murder of Weare, a person with whom 
he was supposed to have had some gambling 
transactions, induced a rumour that he had 
been assassinated. He left England however 
onl)r to avoid his creditors, and came to Ame- 
rica. Here, under an assumed name, he re- 
mained two years, at the end of which time 
he went to France, where he continued to 
reside for the residue of his life. 

In Paris, he devoted himself to literature, 
gambling, and trade in pictures and wine. He 
wrote the celebrated letters in the London 
Morning Chronicle, signed O. P. Q.,* which 
attracted so much attention during the time of 
the Greek revolution, and several pamphlets 
on French politics and the state of Europe. 
He was deprived of his church livings for non- 
residence, but is said to have more than sup- 
plied the loss with his cards and dice. He 
committed suicide, at Fonlainebleau, in the 
summer of 1832. 

The habits of Mr. Colton, in his most pros- 
perous days, were peculiar. A friend who 
visited his lodgings in London, when he was 
in the zenith of his reputation, describes them 
as the most singular and ill-furnished apart- 
ments he had ever seen. Keeping no servant, 
he swept his own floors, and lighted his own 
fires. He had but a single chair fit for 
use, but his closet was alw-iys stored with 
wines and cigars of the finest qualities, and he 
received his guests therefore without a thought 



• This sisnitiire was siiJispqiiently usfd hy a le'ter- 
writer of inferior iil)ilitii's. Mr. Colton's corrch-puiid- 
eiice ended we believe in 1631. 



of apologies for the meanness of his rooms. 
Notwithstanding his dissolute life, few men 
were ever more earnest and constant in their 
advocacy of virtue ; and the eloquence and 
energy with which he delivered his public dis- 
courses, sometimes led his parishioners to 
think he had reformed his morals. On one 
occasion, he surprised his congregation by a 
sermon of extraordinary power, uttered with 
the most serious and impressive voice and 
gesture ; but on leaving the pulpit, with gun 
in hand, he joined his dogs, and drove to the 
house of a sporting friend in the neighbour- 
hood, to be ready for the next day's chase. 

" Lacon" is doubtless a work of great me- 
rit, but the germs of many of its ideas may be 
found in Bacon and other authors, and some 
of its passages are commonplace in both 
thought and diction. Mr. Colton's other 
productions are " A Narrative of the Sampford 
Ghost," " Remarks on the Talents of Lord 
Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan," 
poems entitled "Napoleon," "The Confla- 
gration of Moscow," and " Hypocrisy ;" and 
" Modern Antiquity, and other Lyrical 
Pieces," published after his death. They 
are very unequal, and are marked sometimes 
by a redundancy of epithets, at others by a 
condensation which renders them unintelligi- 
ble, and nearly always by a straining after 
effect and antithesis. One of the finest of his 
pieces is that beginning 

"How long shall man's imprison'd spirit groan V 

which was written but a few weeks before he 
entered unbidden the presence of Him of 
whose laws he was so conspicuous a teacher 
and violator. 

j\Ir. Colton's political writings are among 
the most powerful and original essays in the 
language, but they were on subjects of tem- 
porary interest, and are forgotten. No work 
of its kind ever attracted more universal or 
lasting regard than "Lacon;" but with a per- 
versity of judgment not without parallel in 
the histories of men of genius, he regarded 
" Hypocrisy" as the most perfect and endur- 
ing of his productions. 

167 



168 



CALEB C. COLTON. 



THE CONFLAGRATION OF MOSCOW. 

Her royal nest the Russian eagle fires, 
And to the wild recess — revenged — retires ; 
Her talons unexpended lightnings arm, 
And high resentments all her courage warm. 
Tempt not, thoa fiend of France ! her arduous track; 
Ambition spurs thee on — defeat shall call thee bacli. 
False friends in rear, in front a stubborn foe, 
Thy caterer, famine, — and thy couch the snow : 
Then view that fiery cope with ghastly smile, 
'T is thy ambition's grand funereal pile. 

Blaze on, ye gilded domes and turrets high, 
And like a furnace glow, thou trembling sky ! 
Be lakes of fire the tyrant's sole domain, 
And let that fiend o'er flames and ruins reign ; 
Doom'd, like the rebel Angel, to be shown 
A fiery dungeon, where he hoped a throne. 
Blaze on ! thou costliest, proudest sacrifice 
E'er lit by patriot hands, or fann'd by patriot's sighs. 

By stubborn constancy of soul, a rock 
That firmly meets but to return the shock, — 
By all that power inflicts, or slavery bears — 
By all that freedom prompts, or valour dares — 
By all that bids the bright historic page 
Of Greece and Rome inspire each after age — 
By all of great, that must our wonder raise 
In direst, worst extremities. — we praise 
A deed that animates, exalts, inflames 
A world in arms — from Tanais to the Thames ! 
Hail ! nobly daring, wisely desperate deed : 
Moscow is Paris, should the Gaul succeed ! 

Then perish temple, palace, fort, or tower 
That screens a foeman in this vengeful hour ; 
Let self-devotion rule this righteous cause. 
And triumph o'er affections, customs, laws; 
With Roman daring be the flag unfurl'd — 
Themselves they conquer'd first, and then the world. 
Be this the dirge o'er Moscow's mighty grave, 
She stood to foster, but she fell to save ! 
Her flames like Judah's guardian pillar rose 
To shield her children, to confound her foes ; 
That mighty beacon must not blaze in vain, 
It rouses earth, and flashes o'er the main. 

The sacrifice is made, the deed is done : 
Russia ! thy woes are finish'd, Gaul's begun ! 
Soon to return — retire ! There is a time 
When earthly virtue must not cope with crime. 
Husband thy strength, let not a life be lost. 
One patriot's life is worth the Gallic host ; 
Unbend a while thy bow, more strongly still 
To force thy shaft, and all thy quivers fill ; 
Crouch'd like the tiger, prescient of the prey, 
Collect thy might, augmented by delay ; 
Still as the calm, when on her siren breast 
The si umbering earthquake and the whirlwind rest. 
To courage, strength — to strength, cool wisdom 

bring; 
Nurse every nerve, and pinme thy ruffled wing ; 
Firm, but composed, — prepared, but tranquil prove, 
As the dread eagle at the thron° of Jove ! 
Each arm provide, and engine of the war, 
Till rout and havo'-, answer — H^^re we are ! 
And valour, Jiteel'd by virtuous energy. 
To just rev -nge shall utter — Come with me! 



From pine-ploughed Baltic, to that ice-bound coast, 
Where desolation lives, and life is lost, 
Bid all thy Centaur-sons around thee close, 
Suckled in storms, and cradled on the snows, 
Hard as that sea of stone, that belts their strand 
With marble wave, more solid than the land ; 
Men fiercer than their skies, inured to toil, 
And as the grave tenacious of the spoil, — 
Throng'd as the locust, as the lion brave. 
Fleet as the pard that hies her young to save ; 
Tell them their king, their father takes the field, 
A host his presence — and his cause a shield ! 
Nor strike the blow, till all thy northern hive, 
Concentering thick, for death or glory strive ; 
Then round the invader swarm, his death-fraught 

cloud, 
While the white desert girds him like a shroud, — 
Full on his front and rear, the battle-tide 
With arm of lightning, hoof of thunder guide ; 
Soon shall the Gaul his transient triumph rue — 
Fierce burns the victim, and the altar too ! 

Now sinks the blood-red sun, eclipsed by light, 
And yields his throne to far more brilliant night. 
Roused by the flames, the blast, with rushingsound, 
Both fed and fann'd the ruin that it found. 
Long stood each stately tower and column high. 
And saw the molten gulf beneath them lie: 
Long rear'd their heads the aspiring flames above. 
As stood the giants when they warr'd with Jove, — 
Conquer'd at length, with hideous crash they fall, 
And one o'erwhelming havoc covers all. 
Nor ^tna, nor Vesuvius, though combined 
In horrid league, and chafed by every wind 
That from the hoarse jEolian cave is driven. 
Could with such wreck astound both earth and 

heaven. 
Rage, elements ! wreck, ravage all )'e can. 
Ye are not half so fierce as man to man ! [mand. 
Wide and more wide, self-warn'd, without com- 
Gaul's awe-struck files thcircircling wings expand ; 
Through many a stage of horrors had they pass'd — 
The climax this, the direst and the last ; 
Albeit unused o'er others' griefs to moan, 
Soon shall they purchase feeling from their own. 
From flank to centre, and from rear to van, 
The billowing, crackling conflagration ran, — 
Wraps earth in sulphurous wave, and now the sUies 
With tall colossal magnitude defies, — 
Extends her base, while sword and spear retire, 
Weak as the bulrush to the lava's ire. 
Long had that circle, belted wide and far 
By burnish'd helm, and bristling steel of war, 
Presented hideous to the Gallic-host 
One blazing sea, one adamantine coast ! 
High o'er their head the bickering radiance towers, 
Or falls from clouds of smoke in scorchins showers : 
Beneath their crimson concave long they stood 
Like bordering pines, when lightning fires the wood, 
And as they hemm'd that grim horizon in. 
Each rpad in each the terrors of the scene. 
Some fear'd — accusing- conscience waked the fear, 
The day of wrath and retribution near, [proclaim, 
Deem'd that they heard tb.nt thunderous Voice 
"Thou moon, to blood be turned ; thou earth, to 

flame !" 



CALEB C. COLTON. 



169 



Red-robed destruction far and wide extends 
Her thousand arms, and summons all her fiends 
To glut their fill, a gaunt and ghastly brood! 
Their food is carnage, and their drink is blood; 
Their music, wo : nor did that feast of hell 
Fit concert want, — the conquerors' savage yell — 
Their groans and shrieks whom sickness, age, or 

wound, 
Or changeless, fearless love in fatal durance bound. 

While valour sternly sighs, while beauty weeps ; 
And vengeance, soon to wake like Samson, sleeps, 
Shrouded in flame, the imperial city low 
Like Dagon's temple falls — but falls to crush the foe! 

Tyrant ! think not she unavenged shall burn ; 
7'hou too hast much to sutler, much to learn : 
That thirst of power the Danube but inflamed, 
By Neva's cooler current may be tamed. 
Triumph a little space by craft and crime. 
Two foes thou canst not conquer — Truth and time. 
Resistless pair ! tiiey doom thy power to fade, 
Lost in the ruins that itself hath made ! 
Or, danin'd to fame, like Babylon to scowl 
O'er wastes where serpents hiss, hyrenas howl. 

Forge then the links of martial law, that bind, 
Enslave, imhriite, and mechanise the mind ; 
Indite thy conscript code with iron pen, 
That cancels crime, demoralizes men ; 
Thy false and fata! aid to virtue lend. 
And start a Washington, a Nero end ; 
And vainly strive to strangle in his youth 
Freedom, the Herculean son of light and truth. 
Stepfather foul ! — thou to his infant bed 
Didst steal, and drop a changeling in his stead. 
— Yes, yes, — I see thee turn thy vaunting gize. 
Where files reflect to files the o'erpowering blaze; 
Rather, like Xerxes, o'er those numbers sigh. 
Braver than his, but sooner doom'd to die. 
Here — n'i,)nber only courts that death it cloys ! 
Here — m'ffht is weakness, and /icr.9e(/' destroys ; 
Lead then thy southern myriads lock'd in steel. 
Lead on ! too soon their nerveless arm shall feel 
Those magazines impregnable of snow. 
That kill withoutawound. o'ei;vvhelm without afoe! 

I see thee, — 't is the bard's prophetic eye. 
Blindly presumptuous chief, — I see thee fly ! 
While breathing skeletons, and bloodless dead, 
Point to the thirsting foe the track you tread. 
To seize was easy, and to march was plain ; 
Hard to retreat, and harder to retain. 
Reft of thy trappings, pomp, and glittering gear, 
Dearth in thy vm, — destrur-tion in thy rear, — 
Like fjil'd Darius, doom'd too late to know 
The stern enigmas of a Scythian foe, — 
Thy standard torn, while vengeful scor[)ians sting 
The imperial bird, and cramp his flagging wing, — 
The days are number'd of tliy motley host, 
Freodo'u's vain fear, oppression's vainer boast. 

And lo ! the Bercsyna opens wide 
His yawning mouth, his wintry weltering tide ! 
Eicppctant of his mighty meal, he flows 
In silent ambush through his tra'.-kless snows : 
There shall thy wav-worn ranks despairing stand, 
Like trooping spectres on the Stygian strand, 
And curse their fate and thee, — ^and conquest sown 
With retribution deep, in vain repentance moan ! 
22 



Thy veteran worn by wounds, and years, and toils, 
Pilgrim of honour in all suns and soils ! 
By thy ambition foully tempted forth 
To fight the frozen rigours of the north. 
Above complaint, indignant at his wrongs. 
Curses the morsel that his life prolongs, [sigh, — 
Unpierced, unconqucr'd sinks; yet breathes a 
For he had hoped a soldier's death to die. 
Was it for this that fatal hour he braved, 
When o'er the cross the conquering crescent waved? 
Was it for this he ploughed the western main. 
To weld the struggling negro's broken chain, — 
Faced his relentless hate, to frenzy fired ; 
Stung by past wrongs, by present hopes inspired, — 
Then hurried homa to lend his treacherous aid, 
And stain more deeply still the warrior's blade, 
When spoiled Iberia, roused to deeds sublime, 
Made vengeance virtue — clemency a crime ; 
And 'scaped he these, to fall without a foe ] 
The wolf his sepulchre — his shroud the snow ! 

'Tis morn ! — but lo, the warrior-steed in vain 
The trumpet summons from the bloodless plain ; 
Ne'er was he known till now to stand aloof, 
Still midst the slain was found his crimson hoof; 
And struggling still to join that well-known sound, 
He dies, ignobly dies, without a wound ! 
Oft had he hailed the battle from afar. 
And paw'd to meet the rushing wreck of war! 
With reinless neck the danger oft had braved. 
And crush'd the foe — his wounded rider saved; 
Oft had the rattling spear and sword assail'd 
His generous heart, and had as often fail'd : 
That heart no more life's frozen current thaws, 
Brave, guiltless champion, in a guilty cause ! 
One northern night more hideous work hath done 
Than whole campaigns beneath a southern sun. 
Spoil'd child of fortune ! could the niurder'd 

Turk 
Or wronged Iberian view thy ghastly work. 
They 'd slieathethe vengeful blade, and clearly see 
Franco needs no deadlier, direr curse than thee. 
War hath fed war I — such was thy dread behest, 
Now view the iron fragments of the feast. 
Oh, if to cause and witness others' grief 
Unmoved, be firmness — thou art Stoa's chief! 
Thy fell recorded boast, all Zeno said 
Outdoes — " I wear nil/ heart within my head!" — 
Caucrht in the northern net, what darest thou dare T 
S natch might from madness 1 courage from despair? 
If courage lend thy breast a transient ray, 
"Pis the storm's lightning — not the beam of day : 
When on thine hopes the cloud of battle lowers. 
And frowns the vengeance of insulted powers ; 
Wiien victory trembles in the doubtful scale, 
And death deals thick and fast his iron hail ; 
When all is staked, and the dread hazard known, 
A rising scatll)ld, and a falling throne ! 
Then, can thy dastard soul some semblance wear 
Of manhood's stamp — when fear hath conquer'd 

fear ! 
Canst tho'i be brave] whose dyingprospects show 
A scene of all that's horrible in wo ! 
On whose ambition, long by carnage nursed, 
Death stamps the greatest change — the last, the 

worst ! 



170 



CALEB C, COLTON. 



Death ! — to thy view most terrible of things, 

Dreadful in all he takes and all he brings ! 

— But, King of Terrors ! ere thou seize thy prey, 

Point with a lingering dart to Moscow's fatal day ; 

Shake with that scene his agonizing frame, 

And on the wreck of nations write his name ! 

Oh, when will conquerors from example learn, 

Or truth from aught but self-experience earul 

How many Catos must be wept again ! 

How many Cse^ars sacrificed in vain ! 

While Europe dozed — too aged to be taught — 

The historic lesson young Columhia caught. 

Enraptured hung o'er that inspiring theme, 

Conn'd it by wood, by mountain, and by stream, 

Till every Grecian, Roman name, the morn 

Of freedom hail'd, — and Washington was born ! 

I see thee redden at that mighty name. 
That fills the herd of conquerors with shame: 
But ere we part, Napoleon ! deign to hear 
The bodings of thy future dark career; 
Fate to the poet trusts her iron leaf. 
Fraught with thy ruin — read it and be brief, — 
Then to thy senate flee, to tell the tale 
Of Russia's full revenge, Gaul's deep indignant wail. 
— It is thy doom false greatness to pursue, 
R;^jecting, and rejected by, the true ; 
A Stirling name, thrice proffered, to refuse; 
And highest means pervert to lowest views ; 
Till fate and fortune — finding that thou 'rt still 
Untaught by all their good and all their ill, 
Expell'd, recall'd, reconquer' d — all in vain, — 
Siiall sink thee to thy nothingness again. 
Though times, occasions, chances, foes and friends, 
Urged thee to purest fame, by purest ends, 
In this alone be great — to have withstood 
Such varied, vast temptations to be good ! 
As hood-wink'd falcons boldest pierce the skies, 
The amliition that is blindest highest flies ; 
And thine still waked by night, still dream'd by day, 
To rule o'er kings, as these o'er subjects sway ; 
Nor dared thy mitred Mentor set thee right : 
Thou art not Philip's son — n-ar he the Stagyrite ! 

And lo, thy dread, thy hate ! the Queen of Isles, 
Frowns at thy guilt, and at thy menace smiles ; 
Free of her treasure, freer of her blood. 
She summons all the brave, the great, the good. 
But ill befits her praise my partial line. 
Enough for me to boast — that land is mine. — 

And last, to fix thy flite and seal thy doom, 
Her bugle note shall Scotia stern resume, [plume: 
Shall grasp her Highland brand, her plaided bonnet 
From hill and dale, from hamlet, heath, and wood, 
She pours her dark, resistless battle-flood. 
Breathe there a race, that from the approving hand 
Of nature, more deserve, or less demand 1 
So skill'd to wake the lyre, or wield the sword ; 
To achieve great actions, or, achieved— record ; 
Victorious in the conflict as the truce, — 
Triumphant in a Burns as in a Bruce ! 
Where'er the bay, where'er the laurel grows. 
Their wild notes warble, and their life-blood flows. 
There, truth courts access, and would all engage, 
Lavish as youth — experienced as age; 
Proud science there, with purest nature twined, 
In firmest thraldom holds the freest mind; 



While courage rears his limbs of giant form, 
Rock'd by the blast, and strenglhen'd by the stormi 
Rome fell ; — and freedom to her craggy glen 
Transferr'd that title proud — The nurse of men! 
By deeds of hazard high, and bold emprize, 
Train'd like their native eagle for the skies, — 
Untamed by toil, unconquer'd till they 're slain ; 
Walls in their trenches — whirlwinds on the plain, 
This meed accept from Albion's grateful breath, 
Brothers in arms! in victory ! in death ! — 
Such are thy foes, Napoleon, when time 
Wakes vengeance, sure-concomitant of crime. 
Fixed, like Prometheus, to thy rock, o'erpower'd 
By force, by vulture-conscience slow devour'd ; 
With godlike power, but fiendlike rage, no more 
To drench the world — thy reeking stage — in gore ; 
Fit but o'er shame to triumph and to rule ; 
And proved in all things — but in danger — cool ; 
That found'st a nation melted to thy will. 
And freedom's place didst with thine image fill ; 
Skill'd not to govern, but obey the storm, 
To catch the tame occasion, not to form ; 
Victorious only when success pursued, 
But when thou foUovved'st her, as quick subdued : 
The first to challenge, as the first to run ; 
Whom death and glory both consent to shun — 
Live ! that thy body and thy soul may be 
Foes that can't part, and friends that can't agree. — 
Live ! to be numbered with that common herd. 
Who life's base boon unto themselves preferred, — 
Live ! till each dazzled fool hath understood 
That nothing can be great that is not good. 
And when remorse, for blood in torrents spilt, 
Shall sting — to madness — conscious, sleepless guilt, 
May deep contrition this black hope repel, — 
Snatch me, thou future, from this present, hell ! 
Give me the mind that, bent on highest aim, 
Deems virtue's rugged path sole palh to fame ; 
Groat things with s^nall compares, in scale sublime, 
And death with life ! eternity with time: 
Man's whole existence weighs, sifts nature's laws, 
And views results in the embryo of their cause; 
Prepared to meet, with corresponding deeds, 
Events, as yet imprisoned in their seeds; 
Kens, in his acorn hid, the king of trees. 
And freedom's germ in foul oppression sees ; 
Precedes the march of time — to ponder fate, 
And execute, while others meditate; 
That, deaf to present praise, the servile knee 
Rebukes, and says to glory — Follow me ! 



LIFE. 

How long shall man's imprison'd spirit groan 
'Twixt doubt of heaven and deep disgust of earth ? 

Where all worth knowing never can be known. 
And all that can be known, alas! is nothing worth. 

Untaught by saint, by cynic, or by sage. 
And all the spoils of time that load their shelves, 

We do not; quit, but change our joys in age — 
Joys fr^imed to stifle thought, and lead us from our- 
selves. 



J 



CALEB C. COLTON. 



171 



The drug, tlie cord, the steel, the flood, the flame. 

Turmoil of action, tedium of rest. 
And lust of change, though for the worst, proclaim 

How dull life's banquet is : how ill at ease the guest. 

Known were the bill of fare before we taste, 
Who would not spurn the banquet and the board — 

Prefer th' eternal, but oblivious fast, [sword 1 

To life's frail-frcttcd thread, and death's suspended 

He that the topmost stone of Babel plann'd, 
And he that braved the crater's boiling bed — 

Did these a clearer, closer view command [led 1 
Of heaven or hell, we ask, than the blind herd they 

Or he that in Valdarno did prolong 

The night her rich star-studded page to read — 
Could he point out, midst all tliat brilliant throng. 

His fixed and final home, from fleshy thraldom 
freed ] 

Minds that have scann'd creation's vast domain. 
And secrets solved, till then to sages seal'd. 

Whilst nature own'd their intellectual reign 
Extinct, have nothing known or nothing have re- 
vealed. 

Devouring grave ! we might the less deplore 
Th' extinguish'd lights that in thy darkness dwell, 

Wouldst thou, from that last zodiac, one restore, 
That might th' enigma solve, and doubt, man's 
tyrant, quell. 

To live in darkness — in despair to die — 
Is this indeed the boon to mortals given ? 

Is there no port — no rock of refuge nigh 1 [heaven. 
There is — to those who fix their anchor-hope in 

Turn then, man ! and cast all else aside : 
Direct thy wandering thoughts to things above — 

Low at the cross bow down — in that confide. 
Till doubt be lost in faith, and bliss secured in love. 



IRREGULAR ODE, ON THE DEATH OF 
LORD BYRON. 

We mourn thy wreck ; — that mighty mind 

Did whirlwind passions whelm. 
While wisdom waver'd, half inclined 

To quit the dangerous helm ; 
Thou wast an argosy of cost, 

Equipp'd, enrich'd in vain, 
Of gods the work — of men the boast, 
Glory thy port, — and doomed to gain 
That splendid haven, only to be lost ! 

Lost, even when Greece, with conquest blest, 

Thy gallant bearing hail'd : — 
Then sighs from valour's mailed breast, 

And tears of beauty fail'd ; 
Oh ! hadst thou in the battle died, 

Triumphant even in death. 
The patriot's as the poet's pride. 
While Iwih Mincrvas twined thy wreath. 
Then had thy full career malice and fate defied ! 

What architect, with choice design, 

— Of Rome or Athens styled — 
Ere left a monument like thine] — 

And all from ruins piled ! 



A prouder motto marks thy stone 

Than Archimedes' tomb; 
He asked a fulcrum — thou demandest none, 
But — reckless of past, present, and to come — 
Didst on thyself depend, tosiiake tiie world — alone/ 

Thine eye to all extremes and ends 

And opposites could turn. 
And, like the congelated lens, 

Could sparkle, freeze, or burn ; — 
But in thy mind's abyss profound, 

As in some limbo vase. 
More shapes and monsters did abound. 
To set the wondering world aghast. 
Than wave-worn Noah fed, or starry Tuscan found! 

Was love thy lay, — Citha;ra reiii'd 

Her car, and own'd the spell I 
Was hate thy theme, — that murky fiend 

For hotter earth left hell ! 
The palaced crown, the cloister'd cowl, 

Moved but thy spleen or mirth ; 
Thy smile was deadlier than thy scowl, 
In guise unearthly didst thou roam the earth, 
Screen'd in Thalia's mask, — to drug the tragic bowl! 

Lord of thine own imperial sky, 

In virgin " pride of place," 
Thou soared'st where others could not fly. 

And hardly dared to gaze ! — 
The condor, thus, his pennon'd vane 

O'er Cotopaxa spreads. 
But — should he ken the prey, or scent the slain, — 
Nor chilling height nor burning depth he dreads, 
From Andes' crystal crag, to Lima's sultry plain! 

Like Lucan's, early was thy tomb. 

And more than Bion's mourn'd ; — 
For, still, such lights themselves consume, 

The brightest, briefest burn'd : — 
But from thy blazing shield recoiled 

Pale envy's bolt of lead ; 
She, but to work thy triumphs, toil'd. 
And, muttering coward curses, fled ; — 
Thee, thine own strength alone — like matchless 
Milo — foil'd. 

We prize thee, that thou didst not fear 

What stoutest hearts might rack. 
And didst the diamond genius wear. 

That tempts — yet foils — the attack. 
We mourn thee, that thou wouldst not find, 

While prison'd in thy clay, 
— Since such there were, — some kindred mind, — 
For friendship lasts through life's long day. 
And doth, with surer chain than love or beauty, bind! 

We blame thee, that with baleful hght 

Thou didst astound the world, 
— A comet, plunging from its height, 

And into chaos hurl'd ! — 
Accorded king of anarch power, 

And talent misapplied ; 
That hid thy God, in evil hour. 
Or showed Him only to deride, [lour ! 

And, o'er the gifted blaze of thine own brightness. 



172 



JOHN KENYON. 



Thy fierce volcanic breast, o'ercast 

With ilfii-la's frosty cloak, 
Ail earth with (irR impure could blast, 

And darken heaven with smoke: 
O'er ocean, continent, and isle, 

The conflagration van : — 
Thou, from thy throne of ice, the while, 
Didst tlie red ruin calmly scan, 
And tuned Aiiollo's harp — with IVero's ghastly 
smile ! 

What now avails that muse of fire, — 

Her nothing; of a name ! 
Thy master hand and matchless lyre, 

What have they gained — but fame ! 



Fame — Fancy's child — by folly fed, 

On breath of meanest things, — 
A phantom, wooed in virtue's stead, 
That envy to the living brings, 
And silent, solemn mockery to the dead ! 

Ne'er, since the deep-toned Theban sung 

Unto the listening nine, — 
Has classic hill or valky rung 

With harmony like thine ! 
Who now shall wake thy willow'd lyre ! 

— There breathes but one, who dares 
To that Herculean task aspire ; 
But — less than thou — for fame lie cares, [desire ! 
And scorns both hope and fear — ambition and 



JOHN KENYON. 



John Kenyon, the descendant of a highly 
respectable Anglo-West Indian family, was 
born, we believe, in Jamaica, and educated at 
the Charter-house and Cambridge. On quit- 
ting the university, he went abroad, visited 
various parts of the European continent, and 
resided for some time in Italy. Returning 
from his travels, he settled in England, divid- 
ing his time between London and the country, 
between his books and his friends ; among the 



latter enumerating Wordsworth, Southey, 
Coleridge, and many of the most distin- 
guished persons of the age. 

The only works of Mr. Kenyon with which 
we are acquainted, are a " Rhymed Plea for 
Tolerance," and " Poems, for the most part 
Occasional;" the first published in 1833, 
and the last in 1838. His productions are 
generally of a serious, didactic sort, philoso- 
phical and liberal, and carefully versified. 



TO THE MOON. 

That peace, how deep! this night of thousand 
stars. 
That hide themselves abash'd from the bold sun, 
But hang, all fondly, on thy gentler brow, — 
How calm ! Yet not o'er calmer skies alone, 
Mild Moon ! is thy dominion : Thou dost sway 
The very storm to obey thy peacefulness. 
When winds are piping, and the charged clouds. 
As if out-summon'd by that warlike music. 
First in black squadrons rush ; then sternly muster 
In sullen miss, on either side the heaven. 
Like armies face to face, with space between ; 
'Tis then Tliou glidest forth; like some pale nun, 
Unhooded, whom a higii and rare occasion 
Wrests from her sanctuary, to interpose 
In mortal quarrel, so thou glidest forth. 
And lookcst thy mild bidding ; and the winds 
Arc silent; and those close-compacted clouds, 
Disbanding, fleet in tender flakes away, 
And leave the world to thy tranquillity. . . . 

And ne'er did dawn behold thee lovelier yet, 
Than when we saw thee, one remember'd day. 
Thee and that brightest of all morning-stars, 
Hang o'er the Adrian; not in thy full lustre. 
But graceful with slim crescent; such as, erst, 
Some Arab chief beheld in his own sky 



Of purest, deepest azure ; and so loved it, 
8o loved it, that he chose it for his symbol; 
A jieacoful symbol on a warlike banner ! 
And oft, I ween, in many a distant camp, 
Mid the sharp neigh of steeds, and clash of cymbals, 
And jingle of the nodding Moorish bells, 
When he hath caught that image o'er the tents, 
Hath he bethought him of the [)lacid hours 
When thou wast whitening his night-feedingflocks 
On Yemen's happy hills; and then, perchance, 
Hath sigh'd to think of war ! We too beheld thee 
With untircd eye fix'd upward , scarce regarding 
(So deep the charm which thou hadst wrapp'd 

around us) 
Where reddening lines along the eastward sea 
>>poke of the sun's uprising. Up he rose, 
From o'er the regions of the near lUyria, 
Glorious, how glorious ! — if less gladly hail'd 
As warning thy departure. Yet, some time, 
Ye shone together ; and we then might feel 
How they, the ancient masters of that land, 
Tlic dwellers on the banks of Rubicon, 
Who saw what we were seeing, uninstruct' 
Of wiser faith, had, in no fcign'd devotion, 
Bow'd down to thee, their Dian, and to him 
Bright-hair'd Apollo I Wo, too, bow'd our hearts, 
But in a i)urer worship, to the One, 
Who made, alone, the hills and seas and skies, 



JOHN KEN YON. 



173 



And thee, fair moon, the hallownr of ihein all ! 
— Well did that sun fulfil liis rising promise, 
Showeriiifj redund;int liglit, the livelong- day, 
O'er plain, iind inland peak, and hluest sen ; 
And brightenini? the far mole, which old Ancona 
Hath rear'd upon the waves. Meanwhile, thy form 
(Faint and more faint, and. if might be, more fair; 
And still, as near to lose thee, loved the more) 
'I'hinn'd to unseen. But as some morning dream, 
Too sweet to part wilh, and which yet must fade 
At touch of light, will oft. unconsciously 
Mix with the day, serener thoughts inweaving 
Than sunbeams bring ; or, as some melody. 
Closed on the ear, nor e'en by it remember'd, 
Will still its silent agency prolong 
Upon the s})irit, with a hoarded sweetness 
Tempering the after-mood ; e'en so did'st thou 
Waft the bland influence of tiiy dawning presence 
Over the onward hours. Yet, thou sphered vestal ! 
If mine it were to choose me when to bend 
Before thy high-hung lamp ; and venerate 
Thy mysteries ; and feel, not hear, the voice 
Of thy mute admonition; let it be 
At holy vesper-tide, when nature all 
Whispers of peace ; if solenm less than night's, 
More soothing still. Such season of the soul 
Obeys tliee best. For as the unwrinl^led [)ool, 
Still'd o'er by stirless eve, will dimple under 
The tiniest brushing; of an insect's wing ; 
So, at that hour, do hinnan hearts respond 

To every touch of finer thought Such eve 

Such blessed eve was ours, when last we stood 

Beside the storied shore of Gaeta, 

Breathing its citron'd air. Silence more strict 

Was never. The small wave, or ripple rather. 

Scarce lisping up the sand, crept to the ear, [ment 

Sole sound ; nor did we break the calm with move- 

Or sacrilege of word ; but stay'd in peace, 

Of thee expectant. And what need had been 

Of voiced language, vifhcn the silent eye, 

And silent pressure of each link'd arm, 

Spoke more than utterance ? Nay, whose tongue 

might tell 
What hues were garlanding the western sky 
To welcome thy approaching ! Purple hues 
With orange wove, and many a floating lake 
Crimson or rose, with that last tender green 
Which best relieves thy beauty. Who may paint 
How glow'd those hills, with depth of ruddy liglit 
Translucified, and half ethereal made. 
For thy white feet to trea<l on 1 and, ere long, — 
E'er yet those hues had left or sky or hill. 
One peak with pearling top confess'd thy coming. 
Thsre didst thou pause awhile, as inly musing 
O'er realm so fair ! And, first, thy rays fell partial 
On many a scatter'd object, iiere and there ; 
Edging or tipping, with fintastic gleam. 
The sword-like aloe, or the tcnt-roof'd pine. 
Or a Iding a yet paler pcnsivenesa 
To the pale olive-tree ; or, yet more near us, 
Were flickering back from wall reticulate' 
Of ruin old. But when that orb of thine 
Had cloml) to the mid-coacavc, then broad light 



Was flung around o'er all those girding clifls 

And groves, and villages, and fortress towers, 

And the far circle of that lake-like s«>a. 

Till the whole grew to one expanded sense 

Of peacefulness, one atmosphere of love. 

Where the soul breathed as native, and mere body 

Sublimed to spirit She, too, stood beside us. 

Our human type of thee ; the pure, the peaceful, 

'J'he gentle, — potent in her gentleness ! 

And, as she raised her eyes to thy meek glory, 

In the fond aspiration of a heart. 

Which prized all beauty and all sanctity ; 

We saw, and loved to see, thy sainting ray 

Fall, as in fondness, on her nptnrn'd brow. 

Serene, — like it. Alas ! in how brief space 

Coldly to glitter on her marble tomb! 

She lies in her own land ; far from the scene 
Of that fair eve ; but thou, its fairer part. 
Thou moon ! art here ; and now we gaze on thee 
To think on her ; if still in sorrow, yet 
Not without hope ; and, for the time to come. 
Though dear to us thy light hath ever been. 
Shall love thee yet the more for her sweet sake. 



THE BROKEN APPOINTMENT. 

I souciiT at morn the beechen bower. 

Thy verdant grot ; 
It came, — it went, — the promised hour, — 

I found thee not. 
Light zephyrs from the quivering boughs 

Soon brush'd the transient dew. 
Then first I fear'd that Dove's own vows 

Were transient too ! 

At eve I sought the well-known stream 

Where, wont to rove. 
We breathed so oft, by twilight gleam, 

Our vows of love ; 
I stopp'd upon the pleasant brink. 

And saw the wave glide past; 
Ah me ! I could not help but think 

Love glides as fas>t. 

Then, all along the moonlight glen 

So soft, so fair, — 
I sought thy truant steps agen, — 

Thou w'-rt not there. 
The clouds held on their busy way 

Athwart the wanirig moon; 
And such, I said, Love's litful ray. 

And wanes as soon. 

Oh ! I had cull'd for thee a wreath 

Of blossoms rare ; 
But now each fl()wcrct droops beneath 

The chill night-air. 
'Tis past, — long past, our latest hour, 

And yet thou art not nigh ; 
Oh ! Love, thou art indeed a flower 

Born but to die ! 



r2 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 



One of the most remarkable men of the 
present age is Ebenezer Elliott, the " Corn- 
Law Rhymer," a poet whose productions are 
distinguished alike for boldness and origi- 
i nality, a singular strength and purity of dic- 
tion, and a warm sympathy with the oppressed 
masses. He is called " the bard of the peo- 
ple," for whom he has written, on subjects of 
popular interest, and- in words they all can 
understand. 

Like most men of moderate means and in 
humble life, Ebenezer Elliott has felt the 
heavy and unequal pressure of the laws, 
especially of those commercial restrictions by 
which full twenty per cent, is added to the 
price of bread, turning the sweat of the poor 
into gold for the rich. As is commonly the 
case with men who devote their chief attention 
to some particular evil, he has doubtless mag- 
nified the importance of the bread-tax, and 
attributed to it more than a due share of the 
general suffering. 1 do not, however, well 
understand this subject; and it is enough for 
my present purpose to remark, that the " Poet 
of the Poor," uniting with his more sacred 
functions those of the orator, has exercised in 
England a greater influence against the Corn 
Laws, whatever may be their true character, 
than any other person unconnected with the 
administration of public affairs. 

Of the history of Elliott, more than is 
shown in his writings, I know but little. He 
was born at Masborough, near ShefHeld, in 
1781. His father was a Presbyterian, rigid 
and formal, without affection for the religious 
establishment or the government. Our poet, 
in his boyhood, had few companionships. 
He learned nothing with facility from books. 
He was thought too dull to profit by instruc- 
tion, and his education was neglected. But 
he was quick to observe, and had an ardent 
love of nature. 

When he was about fifteen, a Cameronian 
clergyman bequeathed to his father a library 
containing many valuable works. With these, 
or with so many as were worth reading, he 
soon became familiar. He boasts that he has 
deeply studied all the really good literature 
174 



of the language, and that he has never read 
to the end a worthless book. His mind and 
his style are fashioned by the great masters 
of thought and expression. He is sometimes 
harsh and coarse, but he is never careless. 
Efforts to be refined too often induce effemi- 
nacy. He has no such fault. He is an ar- 
dent, independent thinker, and he utters his 
opinions with force and directness, never dis- 
carding a word because it is too strong. 

Among his longer poems, not included in this 
volume, are Spirits and Men, an antediluvian 
epic. They Met Again, Withered Wild Flow- 
ers, and several dramas. His dramatic pieces 
are not his best, though Bothwell, which I 
have quoted, is a fine fragment. One of his 
plays is entitled Kerhonah ; the scene is in 
Connecticut, and among the dramatis personae 
are the regicides Ward and GofTe, and the 
learned and pious Eliot, well named "Apostle 
of the Indians," who is introduced as the lover 
of some dusky princess. The poet should have 
better learned the missionary, whose character 
was one of the purest and sublimest in history. 

Elliott was for a long time neglected. 
His subjects, like those of Crabbe, whom in 
many ways he is like, are of a homely sort, 
emphatically human, such as, for some rea- 
son, the populartaste does not readily approve. 
He gives simple, earnest, and true echoes of 
the affections. His poems, aside from their 
political character, breathe the spirit of a kind 
of primitive life, unpervertcd, unhackneyed, 
and fresh as the dews on his own hawthorn. 
Carlyle, Bulwer, and other critics, seeing 
in him incontestable signs of genius, at length 
handed him up to fame. Those Avho were 
most opposed to his politics, recognised him 
as a poet ; society seemed to be ashamed of 
the indifference with which it had treated 
him ; and his works rose rapidly in the popu- 
lar estimation. He takes rank now among 
the first of the living poets of England. 

Mr. Elliott is more than sixty years of 
age. He has been for many years a steel 
refiner and iron merchant at Sheffield, where 
he is much respected for his high qualities as 
a man. 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 



175 



BOTHWELL.— A DRAMATIC POEM. 

SCENE — Inside of a dungeon, in a fortress on 
the cotist of Nurway. Bothwkll sleeping. 
RiiiNVALT gazing through a barred window 
on the rocks, and stormy sea below. 

Rhin. Splendour in heaven, and horror on the 

main ! 
Sunshine and storm at once — a troubled day. 
Clouds roll ill brightness, and descend in rain. 
How the waves rush into the rocky bay. 
Shaking the eternal barriers of the land ! 
And ocean's face is like a battle plain. 
Where giant demons combat hand to hand ; 
While, as their voices sink and swell again. 
Peace, listening on the rainbow, bends in pain. 
Where is the voice, whose stillness man's heart 

hears. 
Like dream'd-of music, wordless, soft, and low 1 
The voice, which dries on sorrow's cheek her tears, 
Or, lest she perish, bids the current flow ] 
That voice the whirlwind in his rage reveres; 
It bids tlie blast a tranquil sabbath keep : 
Lonely as death, harmonious as the spheres, 
It whispers to the wildness of the deep. 
Till, calm as cradled babe, the billows sleep. 
Oh, careless of the tempest in his ire. 
Blush, ruby glow of western heaven ! Oh, cast 
The hue of roses, steep'd in liquid fire, 
On ocean in his conflict with tlie blast. 
And quiver into darkness, and retire. 
And let wild day to calmest night subside ; 
Let the tired sailor from his toil respire. 
The dreticli'd flag hang, unmoving, o'er the tide. 
And j)illaw'd on still clouds, the whirlwind ride! 
Then, Queen of Silence, robe thee, and arise. 
And, through the barr'd loop of this dungeon old. 
Visit, once more, its inmate's blasted eyes! 
Let him again, though late, thy light behold ! 
Soulless, not sightless, have his eyeballs roH'd, 
Alike, in light and darkness, desolate. 
The storm beat on his heart — he felt no cold ; 
Summer look'd on him, from heaven's fiery gate — 
Shivering, he scowl'd, and knew not that he scowl'd. 
Unvveeping, yet perturb'd : his bed a stone; 
Bonds on his body — on his mind a spell : 
Ten years in solitude, (vet not alone.) 
And conscious only to the inward hell ; 
Here hath it been his hideous lot to dv\'ell. 
But heav'n can bid the spirit's gloom depart. 
Can chase from his torn soul the demon fell, 
And whispering, find a listener in his heart. 
Oh, let him weep again ! then, tearless dwell. 
In his dark, narrow home, unrung by passing bell ! 
[A long pause. Load thunder ,- and after 
an interval, thunder heard remote.] 
The storm has ceased. The sun is set; the trees 
Are fain to sluin!ier; and, on ocean's breast, 
How softly, yet how solemnly, the breeze, 
With unjjerceived gradation, sinks to rest! 
No voice, no sound is on the ear impress'd ; 
Twilight is wec[)ing o'er the pensive rose; 
The stoat slumbers, coil'd up in his nest! 
The grosbeak on the owl's porch seeks repose ; 



And o'er the heights, behold ! a pale light glows. 
Waked hy the bat, up-springs the startled snake ; 
The cloud's edge brighten.s — lo, the moon ! and 

grove. 
And tree, and shrub, bath'd in her beams, awake, 
With tresses cluster'd like the locks of love. 
Behold ! the ocean's tremor ! slowly move 
The cloud-like sails; an<l, as their way they urge, 
Fancy might almost deem she saw, above, [surge, 
The streamer's chasten'd hues ; bright sleeps the 
And dark the rocks, o.i ocean's glittering verge. 
Now lovers meet, and labour's task is done. 
Now stillness hears the l)reathing heifer. Now 
Heavens azure deepens ; and, where rock-rills run, 
Kest on the shadowy mountain's airy brow 
Clouds that have taken their farewell of the sun ; 
While calmness, reigning o'er that wintry clime, 
Pauses and listens ; — hark ! the evening gun ! 
Oh, hark ! — the sound expires ! and silence is 

sublime. 
Moonlight o'er ocean's stillness ! on the crest 
Of the poor maniac, moonlight! — He is calm; 
Calmer he soon will be in endless rest: — 
Oh, be thy coolness to his brow as balm, [breast ! 
And breathe, thou fresh breeze, on his burning 
For memory is returning to his brain ; 
The dreadful j)ast, with worse than wo impress'd ; 
And torturing time's eternity of pain; 
The curse of mind returns ! Oh take it back again ! 
[A long pause, during ichich he bends 
aiixiously over Botkwell.] 
Alas ! how flutteringly he draws his breath ! 

Both. My blessed Mary ! 

Riiin. Calmer he appears — 

Sad, fatal symptom! swift approaches death. 

Both. Mary ! a hand of fire my bosom sears. — 
Oh do not leave me ! — Heavenly Mary ! — years. 
Ages of torture pass'd. and thou earnest not ; 
I waited still, and watch'd, but not in tears ; 
I could not weep ; mine eyes are dry and hot, 
And long, long since, to shed a tear forgot, [gone ! 
A word ! though it condemn me ! — stay ! she's 
Gone ! and to come no more ! [He faints.] 

Rhin. Ah, is it so] 

His pilgrimage is o'er, his task is done ; 
How grimly still he lies ! yet his eyes glow, 
As with strange meaning. Troubled spirit, go ! 
How threateningly his teeth are clench 'd ! how fast 
He clutches his grasp'd hair ! — hush ! — breathless] 

No! 
Life still is here, though withering hope be past ; 
Come, bridegroom of despair ! and be this sigh 
his last. ■ 

Both. Where am I] What art thou ] 

Rhin. Call me a friend. 

And this a prison. 

Both. Voice of torture, cease ! — 

Oh, it returns! — terrific vision, end! — 
When was it] Yesterday] no matter — peace! 
I do remember, and too well, too well ! 

Rhi7i. How is it with thee ] 

Both. Why wilt thou ofllend ]— 

Ha! all ye fiends of earth, and ye of hell, 
I surely am awake! Thine angel send, [spell! 
Thou, king of terrors call'd, and break this hideous 



176 



EBENEZEK ELLIOTT. 



Rhin. A tear T and shed by thee 1 

Both. I breathed in flame ; 

The sleepless worm of wrath was busy here ; 
When — ah, it was a dream ! — my lady came, 
Lovely and wan in wo, with the big tear 
To cool my fever'd soul. In love and fear, 
O'er me she bent, as at the hermitage. 
When (maim'd in conflict with the mountaineer) 
She kiss'd my wounds, while Darnley swell'd with 

rage; 
Tears only ! not a word ! she fled ! — and I am here. 
She fled ; and then, within a sable room, 
Methought I saw the headsman and the axe ; 
And men stood round the block, with brows of 

gloom. 
Gazing, yet mute, as images of wax ; 
And, while the victim moved to meet her doom, 
All wept for Mary Stuart. Pale, she bent. 
As when we parted last ; yet towards tiie tomb 
Calmly she look'd, and smiling, prayers up sent 
To pitying Heaven. A deep and fearful boom 
Of muttcr'd accents rose, when to the ground 
The sever'd head fell bleeding ! and, aghast, 
Horror on horror stared. And then a sound 
Swell'd, hoarsely yelling, on the sudden blast, 
As of a female voice that mimick'd wo; 
But, as above that hall of death it pass'd, 
'T was changed into a laugh, wild, sullen, low, [cast. 
Like a fiend's growl, who, from heaven's splendour 
Quaffs fire and wrath, where pain's red embers glow. 
Do I not know thee 1 I'm forgetful grown : 
Where did I see thee first? 

Rhin. Here, even here ; 

Thy ten years' comrade — still to thee unknown. 
In all that time thou didst not shed a tear 
Until this hour. Raving, with groan on groan. 
Thou speak'st of more than horror, and thy moan 
Was torture's music. O'er thy forehead hot 
Thine hands were clasp'd ; and still wast thou alone. 
Brooding o'er things that have been, and are not. 
Though t was with thee, almost turn'd to stone, 
Here, where I pined for twenty years before 
Thy coming. 

Both. Thirty years a prisoner ! 

Here, didst thou say 1 

Rhin. Ah, thirty years and more. 

My wife ! — Oh never may I look on her ! 
My children ! 

Both. Didst thou spill man's blood ; or why ? 

Rhin. I spilt man's blood in battle. Oh, no more. 
Liberty, shall I breathe thy air on high 
Where the cloud travels, or along the shore 
When the waves frown, like p;itriots sworn to die ! 
I met the oppressors of my native land, [afar,) 
(Wide waved their plumes o'er Norway's wilds 
I met them, breast to breast, and hand to hand, 
O'ercome, not vanquish'd, in the unequal war : 
And this is Freedom's grave. 

Both. Freedom 1 Thou fool. 

Deserving chains ! Freedom 7 — a word to scare 
The sceptred babe. Of thy own dream thou tool 
And champion, white in folly ! From me far 
Be rant like thine — of sound a senseless jar. 

Rhin. Say, who art thou that ravest of mur- 
der'd kings, 



And darest, before her champion vow'd, profane 
The name of Freedom 1 Long forgotten things 
To my soul beckon ; and my hand would fain 
(Stung by thy venon) grasp a sword again, 
In battle with these tyrants ! Gone 1 — alas ! 
'Tis the death-rattle in the throat — his pain 
Draws to a close. Again 1 Dark spirit, pass ! 

Both. Lift, lift me up ! that on my burning brain 
The pallid light may shine ! and let me see 
Once more the ocean. Thanks! Hail, placid deep! 
Oh, the cold light is comfort ! and to me 
The freshness of the breeze comes like sweet sleep 
To him whose tears his painful pillow steep ! 
When last I saw those billows they were red. 
Mate of my dungeon ! know'st thou why I weep 7 
My chariot, and my war-horse, and my bed. 
Ocean, before me swells, in all its glory spread 
Lovely ! still lovely Nature ! and a line 
Of quivering beams, athwart the wavy space, 
Runs like a beauteous road to realms divine. 
Ending where sea and stooping heaven embrace. 
Crisj/d with glad smiles is ocean's aged lace; 
Gemm'd are the lingers of his wrinkled hand. 
Like glittering fishes, in the wanton race, 
The little waves leap laughing to the land, 
Light following light — an everlasting chase. 
Lovely, still lovely ! chaste moon, is thy beam 
Now laid on Jedburgh's mossy walls asleep. 
Where Mary pined for me ; or dost thou gleam 
O'er Stirling, where I first, in transport deep, 
Kiss'd her hless'd hand, when Darnley bade her 

weep ; 
Or o'er Linlithgow and the billows blue. 
Where (captured on the forest-waving steep) 
She almost fcar'd my love, so dear and true ; 
Or on that sad field, where she could hut look adieu'.' 
Rhin. Weep on ! if thou, indeed, art he whose 

fame 
Hath pierced the oblivion even of this tomb, 
Where life is buried, and whose fearful name 
Amazement loves to speak, while o'er thy -doom, 
Trembling, he weeps. Did she, whose charms 

make tame 
All other beauty, Scotland's matchless Queen, 
Creation's wonder, on that wither'd frame, 
Enamour'd smile ? Sweet tears there are, I ween; 
Speak then of her, where tears are shed more oft 

than seen. 
Both. Perhaps the artist might, with cunning 

hand. 
Mimic the morn on Mary's lip of love ; 
And fancy might before the canvass stand. 
And deem he saw the unreal bosom move, [glows 
But who could paint her heavenly soul, which 
With more than kindness — the soft thoughts that 

rove 
Over the moonlight of her heart's repose — 
The wish to hood the falcon, spare the dove, 
Destroy the thorn, and multiply the rose 7 
Oh, hadst thou words of fire, thou couldst not 

paint 
My Mary in her majesty of mind. 
Expressing half the queen and half the saint! 
Her fancy, wild as pinions of the wind. 
Or sky-ascending eagle, that looks down, 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 



177 



Calm, on the homeless cloud he leaves behind ; 

Yet beautiful as freshest flower full blown, 
That bends beneath the midnight dews reclined ; 
Or yon resplendent path, o'er ocean's slumber 

thrown. 
'Twas such a night — Oh, never, bless'd thought, 

depart ! — 
When Mary utter'd first, in words of flame. 
The love, the guilt, the madness of her heart, 
While on my bosom burn'd her cheek of shame. 
Thy blood is ice, and therefore, thou wilt blame 
1'he queen, the woman, the adulterous wife. 
The hapless, and the fair ! — Oh, but her name 
Needs not thy mangling ! Her disastrous life 
Needs not thy curse ! Spare, slanderer, spare her 

fame ! 
Then wore the heavens, as now, the clouded veil ; 
Yet mark'd I well her tears, and that wan smile 
So tender, so confiding, whose sweet tale. 
By memory told, can even now beguile 
My spirit of its gloom ! for then the pale 
Sultana of the night her form display'd, 
Pavilion'd in the pearly clouds afar. 
Like brightness sleeping, or a naked maid. 
In virgin ciiarms unrivall'd ; while each star, 
Astonish'd at her beauty, seem'd to fade — 
Each planet, envy-stung, to turn aside — 
Veiling their blushes with their golden hair. 
Oh! moment rich in transport, love, and pride! 
Big, too, with wo, with terror, with despair ! 
While, wrestling thus, I strive to choak my groan, 
And, what I cannot siiun, may learn to bear, 
Thai moment is immortal, and my own ! 
Fate from that grasp that moment tear ! 
That moment for an age of might atone ! 
Poor Rizio of the flute, whom few bewail ; [hate. 
Worth Mary's tears, was well worth Darnley's 
Jealous again ! Why, who could e'er prevail. 
Monarch or slave, in conflict with his fate 1 

Behold the King of Hear it not, chaste night! 

King ! keep no monkey that has got a tail ! 
In nought but things emasculate delight ! 
Let no fly touch her, lest it be a male ! 
And, like the devil, infest a paradise in spite ! 

Pride, without honour! body, without soul ! 
The heartless breast a brainless head implies. 
If men are mad, when passion scorns control, 
And self-respect with shame and virtue flies, [rude ! 
Darnley hath long been mad. — Thou coxcomb 
Thou reptile, shone on by an angel's eyes ! 
Intemperate brute, with meanest thoughts imbued ! 
Dunghill ! wouldst thou the sun monopolize 1 
Wouldst thnu have Mary's love 1 for what ? In- 
gratitude. 

The quivering flesh, though torture-torn, may live; 
But souls, once deeply wounded, heal no more: 
And decm'st thou thatscorn'd woman can forgive? 
Darnley, thou dream'st, but not as heretofore! 
Mary's feign'd smile, assassin-like, would gore ; 
There is a snake beneath her sorrowing eye ; 
The crocodile can weep : with bosom frore 
O'er thy sick-bed she heaves a traitorous sigh : 
Ah, do not hope to live ! she knows that thou 
shalt die. 

23 



Yet Mary wept for Darnley, while she kiss'd 
His murderer's cheek at midnight. Sad was she; 
And he, who then had seen her, would have miss'd 
The rose that was not where it wont to be. 
Or marvell'd at its paleness. None might see 
The heart, but on tlie features there was wo. 
Then put she on a mask, and gloomily — 
For dance and ball prepared — arose to go : 
" Spare, spare my Darnley's life !" she said — but 
mean'd she so ] 

Now bends the murderer — Mark his forehead fell ! 
What says the dark deliberation there 1 — 
Now bends the murderer — Hark I — it is a knell ! — 
Hark! — sound or motion? 'Twas his cringing hair. 
Now bends the murderer — wherefore doth he start 1 
'Tis silence — silence that is terrible ! 
When he hath business, silence should depart. 
And maniac darkness, borrowing sounds from hell, 
Sufler him not to hear his throbbing heart? — 
Now bends the murderer o'er the dozing king. 
Who, like an o'er-gorged serpent, motionless. 
Lies drunk with wine, a seeming-senseless thing ; 
Yet his eyes roll with dreadful consciousness. 
Thickens his throat in impotent distress. 
And his voice strives forutterance, while that wretch 
Doth on his royal victim's bosom press 
His knee, preparing round his neck to stretch 
The horrible cord. Lo! dark as the alpine vetch, 
Stares his wide-open, blood-shot, bursting eye, 
And on the murderer flashes vengeful fire ; 
While the black visage, in dire agony. 
Swells, like a bloated toad that dies in ire, 
And quivers into fixedness! — On high 
Raising the corpse, forth into the moonlight air 
The staggering murderer bears it silently. 
Lays it on earth, sees the fix'd eye-ball glare. 
And turns, affrighted, from the lifeless stare. 
Ho ! fire the mine ! and let the house be rent 
To atoms ! — that dark guile may say to fear, 
"Ah, dire mischance! mysterious accident! 
Ah, would it were explain'd !" ah, would it were ! 
Up, up, the rushing, red volcano went. 
And wide o'er earth, and heav'n, and ocean flash'd 
A torrent of earth-lightning skyward sent; 
O'er heaven, earth, sea, the dread explosion crash'd ; 
Then,clattering fiif, the downward fragmentsdash'd. 
Roar'd the rude sailor o'er the illumined sea. 
" Hell is in Scotland !" Shudder'd Roslin's hall, 
Low'd the scared heifer on the distant lea. 
Trembled the city, shriek'd the festival. 
Paused the pale dance from his delighted task, 
Quaked every masker of the splendid ball ; 
Raised hands, unanswer'd questions seem'd to ask ; 
And there was one who Ican'd against the wall, 
Close pressing to her face, with hands convulsed, 

her mask. 
And night was after that, but blessed night 
Was never more ! for thrilling voices cried 
To the dreaming sleep, on the watcher's pale 

affright, 
" Who murder'd Darnley ? Who the match ap- 
plied 1 
Did Hepburn murder Darnley ?" — " Fool !" replied 
Accents responsive, fang'd with scorpion sting, 
In whispers faint, while all was mute beside, 



178 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 



"'Twas the Queen's husband that did kill the 

King !" 
And o'er the murderer's soul swept horror's freezing 

wing. 
Rhin. Terrific, but untrue ! — Have such things 

been 1 
Thy looks say ay ! and dire are they to me. 
Unhappy King ! and more unhappy Queen I 
But who the murderer] 

Both. What is that to thee 1 [chain, 

Thinkest thou / kill'd him 1 Come but near my 
'I'hou base suspector of scathed misery ! 
And I will dasii the links into thy brain, 
And lay thee (champion of the can't-be-free !) 
There, for thy insolence — never to rise again. 

[He faints.] 
lihin. Alas! how farest thou nowl Darkness 

hath chased 
The dreadful paleness from thy face ; thine eye, 
Upturn'd, displays its wiiite ;. thy cheek is laced 
With quivering tortuous folds ; thy lip, awry, 
Snarls, as thou tearest the straw ; the speechless 

storm 
Frowns on thy brow, where drops of agony 
Stand thick and beadlike ; and, while all thy form 
Is crumpled with convulsion, threateningly [worm. 
Thou breathest, smiting the air, and writhing like a 
Boih. Treason in arms/ — Sirs, ye are envious all. 
To Mary's marriage did ye not consent ? 
Do you deny your signatures — this scrawl 
Of your vile names'! True, I do not repent- 
That I divorced my wife to wed the queen ; 
True, I hate Mar; true, I scorn Huntley's bawl; 
True, I am higher now than I have been — 
And will remain so, though your heads should fall. 
Craig, of the nasal twang, who prayest so well ! _ 
Giencairn, of the icy eye, and tawny hide ! 
If I am prouder than the prince of hell. 
Are ye all meanness that ye have no pride 1 
My merit is my crime. I love my sword. 
And that high sin for which tlie angels fell; 
But still agrees my action with my word; 
That your's does not so, let rebellion tell. 
Submit! or perish here ! or elsewhere — by the cord. 
My comrades, whose brave deeds my heart attests. 
Be jocund ! — But, ah, see their trembling knees ! 
Their eyes are vanquish'd — not by the tossing crests, 
But by yon rag, the pestilence of the breeze, 
Painted with villanous horror ! In their breasts 
Ardour and manliness make now with fear 
A shameful treaty, casting all behests 
That honour loves, into the inglorious rear. 
B}' heaven, their cowardice hath sold us here ! 
Ha ! dastards, terror-quell'd as by a charm, [thee, 
What ! steal ye from the field 1 — My sword for 
Mary ! add courage for his cause ! this arm 
Shall now decide the contest ! — Can it lie 1 
Did Lindsay claim the fight ? — and still lives he 1 
He lives, and I to say it. Hell's black night 
Lower'd o'er my soul, and Darnley scowl'd on me, 
And Mary would not let her coward fight, 
But bade him barter all for infamy ! 
Dishonour'd, yet unburied ! Morton's face 
Wrinkled with insult ; while, with cover'd brow, 
Bravest Kirkaldy mourn'd a foe's disgrace ; 



And Murray's mean contempt was mutter'd low. 

Pale, speechless Mary wept, almost ashamed 

Of him she mourn'd. Flash'd o'er my cheek the 

glow 
Of rage against myself; and undefamed^ 
Worse than my reputation, and not slow, 
I left my soul behind, and fled in wordless wo. 

Then ocean was my home, and I became 
Outcast of human kind, making my prey 
The pallid merchant; and my wither'd name 
Was leagued with spoil, and havoc, and dismay ; 
Fear'd, as the lightning fiend, on steed of flame — 
The Arab of the sky. And from that day 
Mary I saw no more. Sleepless desire 
M^ept ; but she came not, even in dreams, to say, 
(Until this hour,) " All hopeless wretch, expire !" 

Rhin. A troubled dream thy changeful life hath 
been 
Of storm and splendour. Girt with awe and power, 
A Thane illustrious; married to a queen; 
Obey'd, loved, flatter'd ; blasted in an hour ; 
A homicide ; a homeless fugitive 
O'er earth, to take a waste without a flower ; 
A pirate on the ocean, doom'd to live 
Like the dark osprey ! Could fate sink thee lower ? 
Defeated, captured, dungeon'd, in this tower 
A raving maniac ! 

Both. Ah, what next? the gloom 
Of rayless fire eternal, o'er the foam 
Of torment-uttering curses, and the boom 
That moans through horror's everlasting home ! 
Wo, without hope — immortal wakefulness — 
The brow of tossing agony — the gloam 
Of flitting fiends, who, with taunts pitiless. 
Talk of lost honour, rancorous, as they roam 
I'hrough night, whose vales no dawn shall ever 

bless ! — 
Accursed who outlives his fame ! — Thou scene 
Of my last conflict, where the captive's chain 
Made me acquainted with despair ! serene 
Ocean, thou mock'st my bitterness of pain, 
For thou, too, sawest me vanquish'd, yet not slain ! 
Oh, that my heart' s-blood had but stain'd the wave, 
That I had plung'd never to rise again, 
And sought in thy profoundest depths a grave ! 

White billow ! knowest thou Scotland 1 did thy wet 
Foot ever spurn the shell on her loved strand 1 
There hast thou stoop'd, the sea-weed gray to fret — 
Or glaze the pebble with thy crystal hand 1 
I am of Scotland. Dear to me the sand 
That sparkles where my infant days were nursed ! 
Dear is the vilest weed of that wild land 
Where I have been so happy, so accursed ! 
Oh, tell me, hast thou seen my lady stand 
Upon the moonlight shore, with troubled eye, [herl 
Looking towards Norway 1 didst thou gaze on 
And did she speak of one far thence, and sigh? 
Oh, that I were with thee a passenger 
To Scotland, the bless'd Thule, with a sky 
Changeful, like woman ! would, oh, would I were ! 
But vainly hence my frantic wishes fly, 
Who reigns at Holyrood 1 Is Mary there 1 
And does she sometimes shed, for him once loved, 
a tear 1 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 



179 



Farewell, my heart's divinity ! To kiss 

Thy sad lip into smiles of tenderness ; 

To worship at that stainless shrine of Wiss ; 

To meet the elysium of thy warm caress ; 

To be the prisoner of thy tears ; to bless 

Thy dark eye's weeping passion ; and to hear 

The word, or sigh, soul-toned, or accentless, 

Murmur for one so vile, and yet so dear — [Fear ! 

Alas ! 'tis mine no more ! — Thou hast undone me, 

Champion of freedom, pray thee, pardon me 
My laughter, if I now can laugh ! — (in hell 
They laugh not) — he who doth now address thee 
Is Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Hark ! my knell ! 
The death-owl shrieks it. Ere I cease to fetch 
These pantings for the shroud, tell me, oh tell ! 
Believest thou God] — Blow on a dying v\'retch, 
Blow, wind that comest from Scotland ! — Fare- 

thee-well ! 
The owl shrieks — I shall haveno other passing-bell. 
lihin. As from the chill, bright ice the sunbeam 
flies, 
So (but reluctant) life's last light retires 
From the cold mirror of his closing eyes : 
He bids the surge adieu ! — falls back — expires ! 
No passing bell ] Yea, I that bell will be ; 
Pale night shall hear the requiem of my sighs ; 
My wo-worn heart hath still some tears for thee ; 
Nor will thy shade the tribute sad despise. 
Brother, farewell ! — Ah, yes ! — no voice replies ; 
But my tears flow — albeit in vain they flow — 
For him who at my feet so darkly sleeps ; 
And freedom's champion, with the locks of snow, 
Now fears the form o'er which he sternly weeps. 
An awful gloom upon my spirit creeps. 
My ten years' comrade ! whither art thou fled 1 
Thou art not here ! Thy lifeless picture keeps 
Its place before me, while, almost in dread, 
I shrink, yet gaze, and long to share thy bed. 

[He retires to a corner of the dungeon 
farthest from the a)rpse, and there con- 
tinues to gaze upon it in silence.] 



ON SEEING AUDUBON'S 
AMERICA." 



BIRDS OF 



" PAixTiTfG is silent music." So said one 
Whose prose is sweetest painting. Audubon ! 
Thou Raphael of great Nature's woods and seas ! 
Thy living foims and hues, thy plants, thy trees, 
Bring deathless music from the houseless waste — 
The immortality of truth and taste. 
Thou givest bright accents to the voiceless sod ; 
And all thy pictures are mute hymns to God. 
Why hast thou power to bear the untravell'd soul 
Through farthest wilds, o'er ocean's stormy roll ; 
And, to the prisoner of disease, bring home 
The homeless birds of ocean's roaring foam ; 
But that thy skill might bid the desert sing 
The sun-bright plumage of the Almighty's wing? 
With his own hues thy splendid lyre is strung; 
For genius speiks the universal tongue, [wine — 
" Come," cries the bigot, black with pride and 



" Come and hear me — the Word of God is mine !" 
" But I," saith He, who paves with suns his car, 
And makes the storms his coursers from afar, 
And, with a glance of his all-dazzling eye. 
Smites into crashing tire the boundless sky — 
" I speak in this swift sea-bird's speaking eyes, 
These passion-shiver'd plumes, these lucid dyes : 
This beauty is my language ! in this breeze 
I whisper love to forests and the seas ; 
I speak in this lone flower — this dew-drop cold — 
That hornet's sting — yon serpent's neck of gold : 
These are my accents. Hear them I and behold 
How well my proj)het-spoken truth agrees 
With the dread truth and mystery of these 
Sad, beauteous, grand, love-warbled mysteries !" 
Yes, Audubon ! and men shall read in thee 
His language, written for eternity ; 
And if, immortal in its thoughts, the soul 
Shall live in heaven, and spurn the tomb's control, 
Angels shall retranscribe, with pens of fire. 
Thy forms of Nature's terror, love, and ire. 
Thy copied words of God — when death-struck 
suns expire. 



THE PRESS. 

God said — " Let there be light I" 
Grim darkness felt his might, 
And fled away ; 
Then startled seas and mountains cold 
Shone forth, all bright in blue and gold, 

And cried — " 'T is day ! 'tis day !" 
"Hail, holy light !" exclaim'd 
The thunderous cloud, that flamed 
O'er daises white ; 
And lo ! the rose, in crimson dress'd, 
Lean'd sweetly on the lily's breast ; 

And, blushing, murmur'd — " Light !" 
Then was the skylark born ; 
Then rose the embattled corn ; 
Then floods of praise 
Flow'd o'er the sunny hills of noon ; 
And then, in stillest night, the moon 
Pour'd forth her pensive lays. 
Lo, heaven's bright bow is glad ! 
Lo, trees and flowers all clad 
In glory, bloom ! 
And shall the mortal sons of God 
Be senseless as the trodden clod, 

And darker than the tombl 
No, by the mind of man ! 
By the swart artisan I 
By God, our Sire ! 
Our souls have holy light within. 
And every form of grief and sin 
Shall see and feel its fire. 
By earth, and hell, and heaven, 
The shroud of souls is riven ! 
Mind, mind alone 
Is light, and hope, and life, and power ! 
Earth's deepest night, from this bless'd hour, 
The night of minds is gone ! 



180 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 



"The Press !" all lands shall sing; 
The Press, the Press we bring, 
All lands to bless ; 
O pallid Want ! O Labour stark ! 
Behold, we bring the second ark. ! 

The Press ! the Press ! the Press ! 



THE DYING BOY TO THE SLOE BLOS- 
SOM. 

Befoke thy leaves thou comest once more, 

White blossom of the sloe! 
Thy leaves will come as heretofore ; 
But this poor heart, its troubles o'er, 

W^ill then lie low, 

A month at least before thy time 

Thou comest, pale flower, to me ; 
For well thou knowest the frosty rime 
Will blast me ere my vernal prime, 
No more to be. 

Why here in winter ? No storm lowers 

O'er Nature's silent shroud ! 
But blithe larks meet the sunny showers. 
High o'er the doora'd untimely flowers 

In beauty bowed. 

Sweet violets, in the budding grove, 
Peep where the glad waves run ; 
The wren below, the thrush above. 
Of bright to-morrow's joy and love 
Sing to the sun. 

And where the rose-leaf, ever bold. 
Hears bees chant hymns to God, 
The breeze-bow'd palm, moss'd o'er with gold, 
Smiles on the well in summer cold. 
And daisied sod. 

But thou, pale blossom, thou art come, 

And flowers in winter blow, 
To tell me that the wonu makes room 
For me, her brother, in the tomb. 

And thinks me slow. 

For as the rainbow of the dawn 

Foretells an eve of tears. 
A sunbeam on the sadden'd lawn 
I smile, and weep to be withdrawn 

In early years. 

Thy leaves will come ! but songful spring 

Will see no leaf of mine ; 
Her bells will ring, her bride's-maids sing, 
When my young leaves are withering 

Where no suns shine. 

Oh, might I breathe morn's dewy breath, 
When .Tune's sweet Sabbath's chime ! 

But, thine before my time, O death! 

I go where no flower blossometh, 
Before my time. 

Even as the blushes of the morn 
Vanish, and long ere noon 



The dew-drop dieth on the thorn, 
So fair I bloom'd ; and was I born 
To die as soon 1 

To love my mother and to die — 

To perish in my bloom ! 
Is this my sad brief history ? — 
A tear dropp'd from a mother's eye 

Into the tomb. 

He lived and loved — will sorrow say — 

By early sorrow tried ; 
He smiled, he sigh'd, he past away; 
His life was but an April day — 

He loved and died ! 

My mother smiles, then turns away. 

But turns away to weep: 
They whisper round me — what they say 
I need not hear, for in the clay 

I soon must sleep. 

Oh, love is sorrow ! sad it is 

To be both tried and true ; 
I ever trembled in my bliss ; 
Now there are farewells in a kiss — 

They sigh adieu. 

But woodbines flaunt when blue-bells fade. 

Where Don reflects the skies ; 
And many a youth in Shire-clifls' shade 
Will ramble where my boyhood play'd, 
Though Alfred dies. 

Then panting woods the breeze will feel. 

And bowers, as heretofore, 
Beneath their load of roses reel ; 
But I through woodbined lanes shall steal 

No more, no more. 

Well, lay me by my brother's side, 
Where late we stood and wept; 

For I was stricken when he died — 

I felt the arrow as he sigh'd 
His last and slept. 



COME AND GONE. 

The silent moonbeams on the drifted snow 

Shine cold, and pale, and blue. 
While through the cottage-door the yule log's glow 
Cast on the iced oak's trunk and gray rock's brow 

A ruddy hue. 

The red ray and the blue, distinct and fair, 

Like happy groom and bride. 
With azured green, and emerald-orange glare. 
Gilding the icicles from branches bare. 

Lie side by side. 

The door is open, and the fire burns bright, 

And Hannah at the door. 
Stands — through the clear, cold moon'd, and 

starry night, 
Gazing intently towards the scarce-seen height. 

O'er the white moor. 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 



181 



'T is Christmas eve ! and, from the distant town, 

Her pale apprenticed son 
Will to his heart-sick mother hasten down, 
And snatch his hour of annual transport — flown 

Ere well begun. 

The Holy Book unread upon his knee, 

Old Alfred watcheth calm ; 
Till Edwin comes, no solemn prayer prays he, 
Till Edwin comes, the text he cannot see, 

Nor chant the psalm. 

And comes he noti Yea, from the wind-swept hill 

The cottage-fire he sees ; 
While of the past remembrance drinks her fill 
Crops childhood's flowers, and bids the unfrozen rill 

Shine through green trees. 

In thought, he hears the bee hum o'er the moor ; 

In thought, the sheep-boy's call ; 
In thought, he meets his mother at the door ; 
In thought, he hears his father, old and poor, 

"Thank God for all." 

His sister he beholds, who died when he. 

In London bound, wept o'er 
Her last sad letter ; vain her prayer to see 
Poor Edwin yet again : — he ne'er will be 

Her playmate more ! 

No more with her will hear the bittern boom 

At evening's dewy close I 
No more with her v^'ill wander where the broom 
Contends in beauty with the hawthorn bloom 

And budding rose ! 

Oh, love is strength ! love, with divine control. 

Recalls us when we roam! 
In living light it bids the dimm'd eye roll. 
And gives a dove's wing to the fainting soul, 

And bears it home. 

Home! — that sweet word hath turn'd his pale lip red. 

Relumed his fireless eye ; 
Again the morning o'er his cheek is spread ; 
The early rose, tiiat seem'd for ever dead, 

Returns to die. 

Home ! home ! — Behold the cottage of the moor, 

That hears the sheep-boy's call ! 
And Hannah meets him at the open door 
With faint fond scream ; and Alfred, old and poor, 

« Thanks God for all !" 

His lip is on his mother's; to her breast 

She clasps him, heart to heart ; 
His hands between his father's hands are press'd ; 
They sob with joy, caressing and caressed : 

How soon to part ! 

Why should they know that thou so soon, O Death! 

Wilt pluck him, like a weed 1 
Why fear consumption in his quick-drawn breath 1 
Why dread the hectic flower, which blossometh 

That worms may feed 1 

They talk of other days, when, like the birds. 

He cuird the wild flower's bloom. 
And roam'd the moorland, with the houseless herds; 



They talk of Jane's sad prayer, and her last words, 
"Is Edwin comel" 

He wept. But still, almost till morning beamed. 
They talk'd of Jane — then slept. 

But, though he slept, his eyes, half-open, gleam'd; 

For still of dying Jane her brother dream'd. 
And, dreaming, wept. 

At mid-day he arose, in tears, and sought 

The churchyard where she lies. [wrought; 
He found her name beneath the snow-wreath 
Then from her grave a knot of grass he brought. 
With tears and sighs. 

The hour of parting came, when feelings deep 

In the heart's depth awake. 
To his sad mother, pausing oft to weep. 
He gave a token, which he bade her keep 

For Edwin's sake. 

It was a grassy sprig, and auburn tress. 

Together twined and tied. 
He left them, then, for ever ! could they less 
Than bless and love that type of tenderness 1 — 

Childless they died ! 

Long in their hearts a cherish'd thought they wore ; 

And till their latest breath, 
Bless'd him, and kiss'd his last gift o'er and o'er; 
But they beheld their Edwin's face no more 

In life or death ! 

For where the upheaved sea of trouble foams. 

And sorrow's billows rave. 
Men, in the wilderness of myriad homes. 
Far from the desert, where the wild flock roams. 

Dug Edwin's grave. 



FOREST WORSHIP. 

Wtthix the sun-lit forest. 

Our roof the bright blue sky, 
Where fountains flow, and wild flowers blow. 

We lift our hearts on high : 
Beneath the frown of wicked men 

Our country's strength is bowing ; 
But, thanks to God ! they can't prevent 

The lone wildflowers from blowing ! 

High, high above the tree-tops, 

The lark is soaring free ; 
Where streams the light through broken clouds 

His speckled breast I see : 
Beneath the might of wicked men 

The poor man's worth is dying; 
But, thank'd be God ! in spite of them. 

The lark still warbles flying ! 

The preacher prays, " Lord, bless us !" 

" Lord, bless us !" echo cries ; 
" Amen !" the breezes murmur low ; 

" Amen !" the rill replies : 
The ceaseless toil of wo-worn hearts 

The proud with pangs are paying, 
But here, O God of earth and heaven! 

The humble heart is praying 1 
Q 



182 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 



How softly, in the pauses 

Of song, re-echoed wide. 
The cushat's coo, the linnet's lay, 

O'er rill and river glide ! 
With evil deeds of evil men 

The aifrighted land is ringing; 
But still, O Lord ! the pious heart 

And soul-toned voice are singing! 

Hush ! hush ! the preacher preacheth : 

" Wo to the oppressor, wo !" 
But sudden gloom o'ercasts the sun 

And sadden'd flowers below ; 
So frowns the Lord ! — but, tyrants, ye 

Deride his indignation. 
And see not in the gather'd brow 

Your days of tribulation ! 

Speak low, thou heaven-paid teacher I 

The tempest bursts above : 
God whispers in the thunder ; hear 

The terrors of his love I 
On useful hands, and honest hearts, 

The base their wrath are wreaking ; 
But, thank'd be God ! they can't prevent 

The storm of heaven from speaking. 



RIBBLEDIN; OR THE CHRISTENING. 

No name hast thou ! lone streamlet 

That lovest Rivilin. 
Here, if a bard may christen thee, 

I'll call thee " Ribbledin ;" 
Here, where tirst murmuring from thine urn, 

Thy voice deep joy expresses ; 
And down the rock, like music, flows 

The wildness of thy tresses. 

Here, while beneath the umbrage 

Of Nature's forest bower. 
Bridged o'er by many a fallen birch, 

And watch'd by many a flower. 
To meet thy cloud-descended love, 

All trembling, thou rctirest — 
Here will I mvirmur to thy waves 

The sad joy thou inspirest. 

Dim world of weeping mosses ! 

A hundred year ago. 
Yon hoary-headed holly tree 

Beheld thy streamlet flow : 
See how he bends him down to hear 

The tune that ceases never ! 
Old as the rocks, wild stream, he seems, 

While thou art young for ever. 

Wildest and lonest streamlet ! 

Gray oaks, all lichen'd o'er I 
Rush-bristled isles ! ye ivied trunks 

That marry shore to shore ! 
And thou, gnarl'd dwarf of centuries. 

Whose snaked roots twist above me ! 
Oh for the tongue or pen of Burns, 

To tell you how I love ye ! 

Would that I were a river. 
To wonder all alone 



Through some sweet Eden of the wild, 

In music of my own ; 
And bathed in bliss, and fed with dew, 

Distill'd o'er mountains hoary. 
Return unto my home in heaven 

On wings of joy and glory ! 

Or that I were the lichen. 

That, in this roofless cave, 
(The dim geranium's lone boudoir,) 

Dwells near the shadow'd wave. 
And hears the breeze-bo w'd tree-top's sigh, 

While tears below are flowing, 
For all the sad and lovely things, 

That to the grave are going ! 

Oh that I were a primrose, 

To bask in sunny air ! 
Far, far from all the plagues that make 

Town-dwelling men despair ! 
Then would I watch the building-birds, 

Where light and shade are moving. 
And lovers' whisper, and love's kiss, 

Rewards the loved and loving ! 

Or that I were a skylark 

To soar and sing above. 
Filling all hearts with joyful sounds, 

And my own soul with love ! 
Then o'er the mourner and the dead, 

And o'er the good man dying, 
My song should come like buds and flowers. 

When music warbles flying. 

Oh, that a wing of splendour, 

Like yon wild cloud, were mine ! 
Yon bounteous cloud, that gets to give. 

And bonows to resign ! 
On that bright wing, to climes of spring 

I'd bear all wintry bosoms. 
And bid hope smile on weeping thoughts, 

Like April on her blossoms ; 

Or like the rainbow, laughing 

O'er Rivilin and Don, 
When misty morning calleth up 

Her mountains, one by one. 
While glistening down the golden broom, 

The gem-like dew-drop raineth. 
And round the little rocky isles 

The little wave complaineth. 

Oh, that the truth of beauty 

Were married to my rhyme ! 
That it might wear a mountain charm 

Until the death of Time I 
Then, Ribbledin ! would all the best 

Of sorrow's sons and daughters 
See truth reflected in my song. 

Like beauty ou thy waters. 

No longer, nameless streamlet. 

That marriest Rivilin! 
Henceforth, lone Nature's devotees 

Would call thee " Ribbledin," 
Whenever, listening where thy voice 

Its first wild joy expresses, 
And down the rocks all wildly flows 

The wildness of thy tresses. 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 



183 



THE WONDERS OF THE LANE, 

Strong climber of the mountain's side, 

Though thou the vale disdain, 
Yet walk with rae where hawthorns hide 

The wonders of the lane. 
High o'er the rushy springs of Don 

The stormy gloom is roU'd ; 
The moorland hath not yet put on 

His purple, green, and gold. 
But here the titling spreads his wing, 

Where dewy daises gleam ; 
And here the sun-flower of the spring 

Burns bright in morning's beam. 
To mountain winds the famish'd fox 

Complains that Sol is slow 
O'er headlong steeps and gushing rocks 

His royal robe to throw. 
But here the lizard seeks the sun, 

Here coils in light the snake ; 
And here the fire-tuft hath begun 

Its beauteous nest to make. 
Oh then, while hums the earliest bee 

Where verdure fires the plain, 
Walk thou with me, and stoop to see 

The glories of the lane! 
For, oh, I love these banks of rock, 

This roof of sky and tree, 
Tliese tufts, where sleeps the gloaming clock. 

And wakes the earliest bee ! 
As spirits from eternal day 

Look down on earth secure. 
Gaze thou, and wonder, and survey 

A world in miniature ! 
A world not scorn'd by Him who made 

Even weakness by his might; 
But solemn in his depth of shade, 

And splendid in his light. 
Light I not alone on clouds afar 

O'er storm-loved mountains spread, 
Or widely teaching sun and star. 

Thy glorious thoughts are read ; 
Oh, no ! thou art a wondrous book. 

To sky, and sea, and land — 
A page on which the angels look. 

Which inserts understand ! 
And here, O light! minutely fair. 

Divinely plain and clear, 
Like splinters of a crystal hair. 

Thy bright small hand is here. 
Yon drop-fed lake, six inches wide, 

Is Huron, girt with wood ; 
This driplet feeds Missouri's tide — 

And that. Niagara's flood. 
What tidings from the x\ndes brings 

Yon line of liquid light. 
That down from heaven in madness flings 

The blind foam of its might 1 
Do I not hear his thunder roll — 

The roar that ne'er is still ? 
'Tis mute as death ! — but in my soul 

It roars, and ever will. 
What f )rests tall of tiniest moss 

Clothe every little stone ! 



What pigmy oaks their foliage toss 

O'er pigmy valleys lone ! 
With shade o'er shade, from ledge to ledge, 

Ambitious of the sky, 
Thy feather o'er the steepest edge 

Of mountains mushroom high. 

God of marvels I who can tell 
What myriad living things 

On these gray stones unseen may dwell ; 
What nations, with their kings ! 

1 feel no shock, I hear no groan, 

While fate perchance o'ervvhelrns 
Empires on this subverted stone — 

A hundred ruin'd realms ! 
Lo ! in that dot, some mite, like me, 

Impell'd by wo or whim, 
May crawl some atom cliffs to see — 

A tiny world to him ! 
Lo ! while he pauses, and admires 

The works of Nature's might, 
Spurn'd by my foot, his world expires. 

And all to him is night ! 
O God of terrors ! what are we ? — 

Poor insects, spark'd with thought ! 
Thy whisper. Lord, a word from thee 

Could smite us into nought ! 
But shouldst thou wreck our father-land, 

And mix it with the deep, 
Safe in the hollow of thine hand 

Thy little ones would sleep. 



HYMN. 



NrnsE of the Pilgrim sires, who sought, 

Beyond the Atlantic foam, 
For fearless truth and honest thought, 

A refuge and a home ! 
Who would not be of them or thee 

A not unworthy son, 
That hears, amid the chain'd or free, 

The name of Washington ? 

Cradle of Shakspeare, Milton, Knox ! 

King-shaming Cromwell's throne ! 
Home of the Russells, Watts, and Lockes ! 

Earth's greatest are thine own : 
And shall thy children forge base chains 

For men that would be free ? 
No! by thy Elliots, Hampdens, Vanes, 

Pyms, Sydneys, yet to be ! 

No ! — for the blood which kings have gorged 

Hath made their victims wise. 
While every lie that fraud hath forged 

Veils wisdom from his eyes : 
But time shall change the despot's mood: 

And mind is mi<j;htiest then, 
W^hen turning evil into good, 

And monsters into men. 

If round the soul the chains are bound 
That hold the world in thrall — 

If tyrants lau^jh when men are found 
In brutal fray to fall — 



184 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 



LordT let not Britain arm her hands, 

Her sister states to ban ; 
But bless through her all other lands, 

Thy family of man. 

For freedom if thy Hampden fought ; 

For peace if Falkland fell ; 
For peace and love if Bentham wrote, 

And Burns sang wildly well — 
Let knowledge, strongest of the strong. 

Bid hate and discord cease ; 
Be this the burdea of her song : 

"Love, liberty, and peace!" 

Then, Father, will the nations all. 

As with the sound of seas, 
In universal festival, 

Sing words of joy, like these: — 
Let each love all, and all be free. 

Receiving as they give ; 
Lord ! — Jesus died for love and thee ! 

So let thy children live ! 



THOMAS. 

Thou art not dead, my son ! my son ! 

But God hath hence removed thee: 
Thou canst not die, my buried boy. 

While lives the sire who loved thee. 
How canst thou die, while weeps for thee 

The broken heart that bore thee ; 
And e'en the thought that thou art not 

Can to her soul restore thee 7 
Will grief forget thy willingness 

To run before thy duty ? 
The love of all the good and true, 

That fill'd thine eyes with beauty ? 
Thy pitying grace, thy dear request, 

When others had offended, 
That made thee look as angels look. 

When great good deeds are ended 1 
The strength with which thy soul sustain'd 

Thy woes and daily wasting ] 
Thy prayer, to stay with us, when sure 

That thou from us wast hasting ] 
And that last smile, which seem'd to say— 

" Why cannot ye restore me ?" 
Thy look'd farewell is in my heart, 

And brings thee still before nie. 
What though the change, the fearful change. 

From thought, which left thee never, 
To unremembering ice and clay. 

Proclaim thee gone for ever ] 
Thy half-closed lids, thy upturn'd eyes, 

Thy still and lifeless tresses ; 
Thy marble lip, which moves no more, 

Yet more than grief expresses ; 
The silence of thy coffin'd snow. 

By awed remembrance chcrish'd ; 
These dwell with me, like gathered flowers, 

That in their April perish'd. 
Thou art not gone, thou canst not go, 

My bud, my blasted blossom ! 



The pale rose of thy faded face 
Still withers in my bosom. 

Mystery of Mysteries, 

That took'st my poor boy from me ! 
What art thou, Death 1 all-dreaded Death ! 

If weakness can o'ercome thee 1 
We hear thee not ! we see thee not, 

E'en when thy arrows wound us; 
But, viewless, printless, echoless, 

Thy steps are ever round us. 
Though more than life a mystery 

Art thou, the undeceiver. 
Amid thy trembling worshippers 

Thou seest no true believer. 
No ! — but for life, and more than life, 

No fearful search could find thee r 
Tremendous shadow ! who is He 

That ever stands behind thee ? 
The Power who bids the worm deny 

The beam that o'er her blazes. 
And veils from us the holier light 

On which the seraph gazes, 
Where burns the throne of Him, whose name 

The sunbeams here write faintly ; 
And where my child a stranger stands 

Amid the blest and saintly. 
And sobs aloud — while in his eyes 

The tears, o'erflowing, gather — 
" They come not yet ! — until they come. 

Heaven is not Heaven, my father ! 
Why come they not 7 why comes not she 

From whom thy will removes me ? 
Oh, does she love me — love me still ? 

I know my mother loves me ! 
Then send her soon ! and with her send 

The brethren of my bosom ! 
My sisters too ! Lord, let them all 

Bloom round the parted blossom ! 
The only pang I could not bear 

Was leaving them behind me : 

1 cannot bear it. Even in heaven 

The tears of parting blind me !" 



SLEEP. 

Sleep I to the homeless, thou art home ; 
The friendless find in thee a friend ; 

And well is he, where'er he roam, 

Who meets thee at his journey's end. 

Thy stillness is the planet's speed ; 
'J"hy weakness is unmeasured might; 

Sparks from the hoof of death's pale steed- 
Worlds flash and perish in thy sight. 

The daring will to thee alone — 

The will and power are given to thee — 

To lift the veil of the unknown. 
The curtain of eternity — 

To look uncensured, though unbidden. 

On marvels from the seraph hidden ! 

Alone to be — where none have been ! 

Alone to see — what none have seen ! 

And to astonish'd reason tell 

The secrets of the Unsearchable ! 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 



185 



THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 

A ToicE of grief and anger — 

Of pity mix'd with scorn — 
Moans o'er the waters of the west, 

Through fire and darkness borne ; 
And fiercer voices join it — 

A wild triumphant yell ! 
For England's foes, on ocean slain, 

Have heard it where they fell. 

What is that voice which cometh 

Athwart the spectred sea] 
The voice of men who left their homes 

To make their children free; 
Of men whose hearts were torches 

For freedom's quenchless fire; 
Of men, whose mothers brave brought forth 

The sire of Franklin's sire. 

They speak ! — the Pilgrim Fathers 

Speak to ye from their graves ! 
For earth hath mutler'd to their bones 

That we are soulless slaves ! 
The Bradfords, Carvers, Winslows, 

Have heard the worm complain. 
That less than men oppress the men 

Whose sires were Pym and Vane ! 

What saith the voice which boometh 

Athwart the upbraiding waves 1 
« Though slaves are ye, our sons are free, 

Then why will you be slaves 1 
The children of your fathers 

Were Hampden, Pym, and Vane !" 
Land of the sires of Washington, 

Bring forth such men again ! 



A GHOST AT NOON. 

The day was dark, save when the beam 

Of noon through darkness broke ; 
In gloom I sate, as in a dream. 

Beneath my orchard oak ; 
Lo ! splendour, like a spirit, came, 

A shadow like a tree ! 
While there I sat, and named her name, 

Who once sat there with me. 

I started from the seat in fear ; 

I look'd around in awe ; 
But saw no beauteous spirit near, 

Though all that was I saw ; 
The seat, the tree, where oft, in tears. 

She mourn'd her hopes o'erthrown 
Her joys cut otf in early years, 

Like gather'd flowers half-blown. 

Again the bud and breeze were met, 

But Mary did not come ; 
And e'en the rose, which she had set, 

Was fated ne'er to bloom ! 
The thrush proclaim'd, in accents sweet, 

That winter's rain was o'er; 
The blvtehclls throng'd around my feet, 

But Mary came no more. 
24 



I think, I feel — but when will she 

Awake to thought again 1 
A voice of comfort answers me, 

That God does nought in vain: 
He wastes nor flower, nor bud, nor leaf, 

Nor wind, nor cloud, nor wave ; 
And will he waste the hope which grief 

Hath planted in the grave 1 



CORN LAW HYMN. 

LoRn ! call thy pallid angel — 

The tamer of the strong ! 
And bid him whip with want and wo 

The champions of the wrong ! 
Oh say not thou to ruin's flood, 

" Up sluggard ! why so slow 1" 
But alone let them groan. 

The lowest of the low ; 
And basely beg the bread they curse, 

Where millions curse them now ! 

No ; wake not thou the giant 

Who drinks hot blood for wine ; 
And shouts unto the east and west, 

In thunder-tones like thine; 
Till the slow to move rush all at once. 

An avalanche of men, 

Vv'hile he raves over waves 

That need no whirlwind then ; 
Though slow to move, moved all at once, 

A sea, a sea of men ! 



FLOWERS FOR THE HEART. 

Flowers! winter flowers ! — the child is dead, 

The mother cannot speak : 
Oh softly couch his little head. 

Or Mary's heart will break ! 
Amid those curls of flaxen hair 

This pale pink ribbon twine. 
And on the Utile bosom there 

Place this wan lock of mine. 
How like a form in cold white stone. 

The coffirt'd infant lies ! 
Look, mother, on thy little one ! 

And tears will fill thine eyes. 
She cannot weep — more faint she grows. 

More deadly pale and still : 
Flowers ! oh, a flower ! a winter rose. 

That tiny hand to fill. 
Go, search the fields ! the lichen wet 

Bonds o'er the unfailing well; 
Beneath the furrow lingers yet 

The scarlet pimpernel. 
Peeps not a snow-drop in the bower. 

Where never froze the spring! 
A daisy 1 Ah! bring childhood's flower! 

The half-blown daisy bring ! 
Yes, lay the daisy's little head 

Beside the little cheek ; 
Oh haste! the last of five is dead ! 

The childless cannot speak ! 
q2 



REGINALD HEBER. 



This eminent prelate and accomplished 
scholar was born at Malpas, in Cheshire, on 
the twenty-first of April, 1783, and in his 
seventeenth year was sent to Brazen Nose 
College, Oxford. While here he obtained 
the Chancellor's prize for a Latin poem, and 
greatly distinguished himself by a poem in 
English entitled Palestine. Unlike the mass 
of undergraduate prize poems, Palestine at- 
tained at once a high reputation which pro- 
mises to be permanent. On receiving his 
.bachelor's degree, Mr. Heber travelled in 
Germany, Russia, and the Crimea, and wrote 
notes and observations, from which many 
curious passages are given in the well-known 
journals of Dr. Edward Daniel Clarke. 
On his return, he published Europe, a Poem, 
and was elected to a fellowship in All Soul's 
College. He was soon after presented with 
a living in Shropshire, and for several years 
devoted himself with great assiduity to his 
profession. He however found time, while 
discharging his parochial duties, to make 
some admirable translations from Pindar, and 
to write many of his beautiful hymns and 
other brief poems, a volume of which was 
published in 1812. Three years afterward, 
he was appointed to deliver the Bampton 
Lectures, and fulfilled the duty in so able a 
manner as to add greatly to his literary repu- 
tation. In 1822 he was elected to the import- 
ant office of preacher of Lincoln's Inn ; in the 
same year appeared his edition of the works 
of Jeremy Taylor, with notes and an elabo- 
rate memoir; and in 1823 he embarked for the 
East Indies, having accepted tiie appointment 
to the bishopric of the see of Calcutta, made 
vacant by the death of Dr. Middleton. He 
held his first visitation in the Cathedral of the 
capital of Hindostan, on Ascension day, 1824, 
and from that time devoted himself witli great 
earnestness and untiring industry to mis- 
sionary labours. He left Calcutta to visit 
the different presidencies of his extensive 
diocese, and while at Trichinopoli, on the 
second of April, 1826, was seized with an 
apoplectic fit, which on the following day ter- 
136 



minated his life, in the forty-third year of his 
age. He was a man of the most elevated 
character, whose history was itself a poem of 
stateliest and purest tone, and most perfect 
harmony. In the church he was like Me- 
LAN'CTHON, the healer of bruised hearts, the 
reconciler of all dilTerences, the most enthu- 
siastic yet the most placid of all the teachers 
of religion. In society he was a universal 
favourite, from his varied knowledge, his 
remarkable colloquial powers, and his unva- 
rying kindness. India never lost more in a 
single individual than when Heber died. 

The lyrical writings of Heber possess 
great and peculiar merits. He is the only 
Englishman who has in any degree approached 
the tone of Pindar, his translations from 
whom may be regarded as nearly faultless; 
and his hymns are among the sweetest which 
English literature contains, breathing a fervent 
devotion in the most poetical language and most 
melodious verse. I doubt whether there is a 
religious lyric so universally known in the 
British empire or in our own country, as the 
beautiful missionary piece beginning " From 
Greenland's icy mountains." The fragments 
of Morte d'Arlhur, the Mask of Gwendolen, 
and the World before the Flood, are not equal 
to his Palestine, Europe, or minor poems; but 
they contain elegant and powerful passages. 
The only thing unworthy of his reputation 
which i have seen is Blue Beard, a serio- 
comic oriental romance, which I believe was 
first published after his death. 

The widow of Bishop Heber, a daughter of 
Dean Shipley, of St. Asaph, and a woman 
whose gentleness, taste, and learning made 
her a fit associate for a man of genius, has 
published his Life, and his Narrative of a 
Journey through the Upper Provinces of In- 
dia from Calcutta to Bombay, each in two 
volumes quarto. A complete edition of his 
Poetical Works has been issued by Lea and 
Blanchard of Philadelphia, and his Me- 
moirs, Travels, Sermons, and other prose 
writings, have also been reprinted in this 
country. 



REGINALD HEBER. 



187 



CHRISTMAS HYMN. 

BniRHTEST and best of the sons of the moraine ! 

Dawn on our darkness and lend us Thine aid ! 
Star of the East, the horizon adorning, 

Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid ! 

Cold on His cradle the dew-drops are shining, 
Low lies his head with the beast of the stall ; 

Angels adore Him in slumber reclining, 
Maker and Monarch and Saviour of all ! 

Say, shall we yield Him, in costly devotion, 
Odours of Edom, and oflcrings divine 1 

Gems of the mountain and pearls of the ocean, 
Myrrh from the forest or gold from the mine? 

Vainly we offer each ample oblation ; 

Vainly with gifts would His favour secure : 
Richer by far is the heart's adoration ; 

Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor. 

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning ! 

Dawn on our darkness and lend us Thine aid ! 
Star of the East, the horizon adorning. 

Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid. 



THE WIDOW OF NAIN. 

Wake not, O mother ! sounds of lamentation ! 

Weep not, O widow ! weep not hopelessly ! 
Strong is His arm, the Bringer of Salvation, 

Strong is the Word of God to succour thee ! 

Bear forth the cold corpse, slowly, slowly bear him : 
Hide his pale features with the sable pall : 

Chide not the sad one wildly weeping near him : 
Widow'd and childless, she has lost her all ! 

Why pause the mourners ? Who forbids our weep- 
ingi 

Who the dark pomp of sorrow has delay'd 1 
« Set down the bier, — he is not dead but sleeping ! 

Young man, arise !" — Hg spake, and was obey 'd! 

Change, then, O sad one ! grief to exultation : 
Worship and fall before Messiah's knee. 

Strong was His arm, tiie Bringer of Salvation ; 
Strong was the Word of God to succour thee ! 



THOU ART GONE TO THE GRAVE. 

Thou art gone to the grave ! but we will not de- 
plore thee, 
Though sorrows and darkness encompass the 
tomb ; 
Thy Saviour has pass'd through its portal before 
thee. 
And the lamp of His love is thy guide through 
the gloom ! 

Thou art gone to the grave ! we no longer behold 
thee, 

Nor tread the rough path of the world by thy side ; 
But the wide arms of Mercy are spread to enfold thee. 

And sinners may die, for the Sinless has died ! 



Thou art gone to the grave ! and, its mansion for- 
saking, 
Perchance thy weak spirit in fear linger'd long; 
But the mild rays ofParadisebeam'd on thy waking, 
And the sound which thou heardst was the 
seraphim's song ! 

Thou art gone to the grave I but we will not 

deplore thee. 

Whose God was thy ransom, thy guardian and 

guide ; 

He gave thee. He took thee, and He will restore thee, 

And death has no sting, for the Saviour has died ! 



SONG. 



Theue is, they say, a secret well, 

In Ardennes' forest gray, 
Whose waters boast a numbing spell, 

That memory must obey. 

Who tastes the rill so cool and calm 

In passion's wild distress, 
Their breasts imbibe the sullen balm 

Of deep forgetfulness. 

And many a maid has sought the grove. 

And bow'd beside the wave; 
But few have home to lose the love 

That wore them to the grave. 

No ! by these tears, whose ceaseless smart 

My reason chides in vain ; 
By all the secret of a heart 

That never told its pain. 

By all the walks that once were dear, 
Beneath the green-wood bough ; 

By all the songs that soothed his ear 
Who will not listen now. 

By every dream of hope gone by 
That haunts my slumber yet, — 

A love-sick heart may long to die. 
But never to forget ! 



FAREWELL. 

WiiEX eyes are beaming 

What never tongue might tell ; 

When tears are streaming 
From their crystal cell. 

When hands are link'd that dread to part, 

And heart is met by throbbing heart. 

Oh bitter, bitter is the smart. 
Of them that bid farewell ! 

When hope is chidden 

That fain of bliss would tell, 
And love forbidden 

In the breast to dwell. 
When, fctter'd by a viewless chain 
We turn and gaze and turn again, 
Oh, death were mercy to the pain 

Of those that bid farewell ! 



188 REGINALD HEBER. 


MISSIONARY HYMN. 


'Twas merry then in England 
In autumn's dewy morn. 


. 


When echo started from her hill 


From Greenland's icy mountains, 

From India's coral strand, 
Wiiere Afric's sunny fountains 


To hear the bugle-horn. 
And beauty, mirth, and warrior worth 


Roll down their golden sand ; 


In garb of green did go 
The shade to invade 


From many an ancient river, 
From many a palmy plain, 


With the arrow and the bow. 




They call us to deliver 


Ye spirits of our fathers ! 


Their land from error's chain ! 


Extend to us your care. 




Among your children yet are found 


What though the spicy breezes 


The valiant and the fair ! 


Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle. 


'Tis merry yet in Old England, 


Though every prospect pleases, 


Full well her archers know, 


And only man is vile : 


And shame on their name 


In vain with lavish kindness 


Who despise the British bow. 


The gifts of God are strown. 
The heathen in his blindness 






Bows down to wood and stone ! 


VERSES TO MRS. HEBER. 


Can we, whose souls are lighted 
With wisdom from on high, 


If thou wert by my side, my love, 
How fast would evening fail 


Can we to men benighted 


In green Bengala's palmy grove. 
Listening the nightingale ! 


The lamp of life deny ? 


Salvation ! oh, Salvation ! 


The joyful sound proclaim, 


If thou, my love, wert by my side. 


Till each remotest nation 


My babies at my knee. 


Has learn'd Messiah's name ! 


How gayly would our pinnace glide 




O'er Gunga's mimic sea ! 


Waft, waft, ye winds his story. 
And you, ye waters, roll, 


I miss thee at the dawning gray. 
When, on our deck reclined. 


Till like a sea of glory. 

It spreads from pole to pole ! 


In careless ease my limbs I lay 
And woo the cooler wind. 


Till o'er our ransom'd nature. 




The Lamb for sinners slain, 


I miss thee when by Gunga's stream 


Redeemer, King, Creator, 


My twilight steps I guide, 


In bliss returns to reign ! 


But most beneath the lamp's pale beam 




I miss thee from my side. 




I spread my books, my pencil try, 
The lingering noon to cheer, 






But miss thy kind approving eye. 


THE BRITISH BOW. 


Thy meek attentive ear. 




But when of morn and eve the star 


Yf. spirits of our fathers. 


Beholds me on my knee. 


The hardy, bold, and free. 


I feel, though thou art distant far, 
Thy prayers ascend for me. 


Who chased o'er Cressy's gory field 
A fourfold enemy ! 


From us who love your sylvan game, 


Then on ! then on ! where duty leads. 


To you the song shall flow, 


My course be onward still. 


To the fame of your name 


O'er broad Hindostan's sultry mead. 


Who so bravely bent the bow. 


O'er bleak Almorah's hill. 




That course, nor Delhi's kingly gates, 


'Twas merry then in England, 


Nor wild Malwah detain ; 


(Our ancient records tell,) 


For sweet the bliss us both awaits 


With Robin Hood and Little John 
Who dwelt by down and dell ; 


By yonder western main. 


And yet we love the bold outlaw 


Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, 


Who braved a tyrant foe. 


Across the dark blue sea; 


Whose cheer was the deer. 


But ne'er were hearts so light and gay 


And his only friend the bow ! 


As then shall meet in thee ! 



ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 



The father and grandfather of the late Allan 
Cunningham were farmers, in Blackwood, a 
place of much natural beauty, near Dumfries, 
in Scotland, where the poet was born on the 
seventh of December, 1784. When eleven 
years of age, he was taken from the parish 
school and apprenticed to his elder brother, a 
stone mason, with whom he remained until he 
became a skilful workman. The practical 
knowledge thus acquired was of much value 
to him when in later years he wrote his " Lives 
of British Architects," a work as distinguished 
for judicious criticism as for accuracy of state- 
ment and the attractive simplicity of its style. 

The first publications of Cunningham were 
several lyrical pieces in Cromek's "Remains 
of Nithsdale and Galloway Song," a volume 
of which they constituted the most pleasing 
contents. They attracted the attention of Dr. 
Percy, who declared them to be too good for 
antiques ; they were praised by Scott ;* and 
their popularity, surprising as much as it 
gratified the author, led to an acknowledg- 
ment of their paternity. 

In 1810 Cunningham finally abandoned the 
trowel for the pen, and went to London. An 
early and judicious marriage secured to him a 
quiet and happy home. From the suffering 
experienced by so many men of genius, the 
excitements and the ruin of Hook, Maginn, 
and others among his contemporaries, he was 
thus saved. His moral worth was ec^ual to 
his intellectual accomplishments, and he won 
the success which in nearly all instances 
attends upon talents united with industry and 
integrity. Among his earliest publications 
were " Mark Macrabin, or the Covenanters," 
a prose story of considerable power printed in 
" Blackwood," and a series of tales and tradi- 
tions in the London Magazine. These, and 

* Sib Walter Scnrr snys", in his introdiirtory epistle 
' to " The Fortiinps of Nicel," " With a popular impress, 
people would reati and admire the beauties of Allan — as 
it is, they may perhaps only note his defects — or, what is 
worse, not note him at all. But never mind them, honest 
Allan ; you are a credit to Caledonia for all that. There 
are some lyrical effusions of his, too, which ynu would 
do well to rfad, Captain. ' II 'b hame, and it 'a hanie,' 
is equal to Uurns." 



his " Paul Jones" and " Sir Michael Scott," 
we have never seen, but we believe them to be 
inferior to his more recent novels. 

At the end of four years from the commence- 
ment of his life in the metropolis, Cunning- 
ham entered the studio of Sir Francis 
Chantry, where he remained until the death 
of that eminent sculptor, who is supposed 
to have been much indebted to him for the 
marks of imagination and fancy which appear 
in his works. He still found time for literary 
pursuits, and in a short period wrote several 
prose fictions, and " Sir Marmaduke Max- 
well," a dramatic poem, the scenery and 
characters of which belong to his native dis- 
trict. In 1825 he published his "Scottish 
Song," in which are preserved the finest lyrics 
of his native country, with copious traditional 
and critical notes; in 1831, "Lives of Emi- 
nent Painters and Sculptors," which has been 
reprinted in Harpers' Family Library, and the 
" Lives of British Architects," to which we 
have before alluded. In 1832 he wrote " The 
Maid of Elvar," the last and the best of his 
larger poems. It is a rural epic, smoothly 
versified, and containing many pleasing pic- 
tures of scenery and life. Among his more 
recent works were " Lord Roldan," a novel, 
"The Life and Land of Burns," and "Me- 
moirs of Sir David Wilkie," the last of which 
he finished but two days before his own 
death, which occurred on the twenty-ninth of 
October, 1843. 

Cunningham commenced many years ago, 
"The Lives of the Poets from Chaucer to 
Coleridge," a work which he was well qua- 
lified to write, but it was never finished. 
In the " Life and Land of Burns," is a fine 
portrait of " Honest Allan," as Scott was 
wont to call him, exhibiting in vigorous pro- 
portions, penetrating eyes, and countenance 
expressive of power and gentleness, the most 
striking qualities of the man. He is pre- 
sented in the tartan, symbolin?, that love of 
Scotland wliich he ever cherishrd, and which 
is also shown in the selection of the subjects of 
his works, in their style, and in their spirit. 

189 



190 



ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 



A WET SHEET AND A FLOWING SEA. 

A WET sheet and a flowing sea, 

A wind that follows fast, — 
And fills the white and rustling sail, 

And bends the gallant mast: 
And bends the gallant mast, my boys, 

While, like the eagle free, 
Away the good ship flies, and leaves 

Old England on the lee. 

Oh for a soft and gentle wind ! 

I heard a fair one cry ; 
But give to me the snoring breeze. 

And white waves heaving high : 
And white waves heaving high, my boys, 

The good ship tight and free,— 
The world of waters is our home, 

And merry men are we. 

There 's tempest in yon horn'd moon. 

And lightning in yon cloud ; 
And hark ! the music, mariners. 

The wind is piping loud : 
The wind is piping loud, my boys. 

The lightning flashing free, — 
While the hollow oak our palace is. 

Our heritage the sea. 



GENTLE HUGH HERRIES. 

Go seek in the wild glen 

Where streamlets are falling, 
Go seek on the lone hill 

Where curlews are calling ; 
Go seek when the clear stars 

Shine down without number, 
For there shall ye find him 

My true love in slumber. 

They sought in the wild glen — 

The glen was forsaken ; 
They sought on the mountain, 

'Mang lang lady-bracken ; 
And sore, sore they hunted 

My true love to find him, 
With the strong bands of iron 

To fetter and bind him. 

Yon green hill I'll give thee, 

Where the falcon is flying, 
To show me the den where 

This bold traitor's lying — 
Oh make me of Nithsdale's 

Fair princedom the heiress, 
Is that worth one smile of 

My gentle Hugh Herries ? 

The white bread, the sweet milk. 

And ripe fruits, I found him. 
And safe in my fond arms 

L clasp'd and I wound him ; 
I warn you go not where 

My true lover tarries, 
For sharp smites the sword of 

My gentle Hugh Herries. 



They rein'd their proud war-steeds. 

Away they went sweeping. 
And behind them dames wail'd, and 

Fair maidens went weeping ; 
But deep in yon wild glen, 

'Mang banks of blae-berries, 
I dwell with my loved one, 

My gentle Hugh Herries. 



THE POET'S BRIDAL-DAY SONG. 

Oh ! my love's like the steadfast sun, 

Or streams that deepen as they run : 

Nor hoary hairs, nor forty years, 

Nor moments between sighs and fears ; 

Nor nights of thought, nor days of pain, 

Nor dreams of glory dream'd in vain, — 

Nor mirth, nor sweetest song which flows 

To sober joys and soften woes, 

Can make my heart or fancy flee 

One moment, my sweet wife, from thee. 

Even while I muse, I see thee sit 

In maiden bloom and matron wit ; 

Fair, gentle, as when first I sued 

Ye seem, but of sedater mood : 

Yet my heart leaps as fond for thee 

As when, beneath Arbigland tree, 

We stay'd and woo'd, and thought the moon 

Set on the sea an hour too soon ; 

Or linger'd mid the falling dew. 

When looks were fond, and words were few. 

Though I see smiling at thy feet 
Five sons and ae fair daughter sweet ; 
And time, and care, and birth-time woes 
Have dimm'd thine eye, and touch'd thy rose: 
To thee, and thoughts of thee, belong 
All that charms me of tale or song ; 
When words come down like dews unsought, 
With gleams of deep enthusiast thought; 
And fancy in her heaven flies free, — 
They come, my love, they come from thee. 

Oh, when more thought we gave of old 

To silver than some give to gold, 

'Twas sweet to sit and ponder o'er 

What things should deck our humble bower! 

'Twas sweet to pull, in hope, with thee. 

The golden fruit from fortune's tree ; 

And sweeter still, to choose and twine 

A garland for these locks of thine ; 

A song-wreath which may grace my Jean, 

While rivers flow, and woods are green. 

At times there come, as come there ought. 
Grave moments of sedater thought, — 
When fortune frowns, nor lends our night 
One gleam of her inconstant light ; 
And hope, that decks the peasant's bower, 
Shines like the rainbow through the shower : 
Oh then I see, while seated nigh, 
A mother's heart shine in thine eye; 
And proud resolve, and purpose meek. 
Speak of thee more than words can speak,-— 
I think the wedded wife of mine 
The best of all that 's not divine ! 



ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 



191 



IT'S HAME AND IT'S HAME. 

It 's hame and it's hanie, hanie fain would I be, 
O hame, hame, hame to my ain countree ! 
There 's an eye that ever weeps, and a fair face will 

he fain. 
As I pass through Annan Water, with my bonnie 

bands again ; 
When the flower is in the bud, and the leaf upon the 

tree. 
The lark shall sing me hame in my ain countree. 

It's hame and it's hame, hame fain would I be, 
O hame, hame, hame to my ain countree ! 
The green leaf of loyalty 's beginning for to fa', 
The bonnie white rose it is withering and a'. 
But I '11 water 't with the blood of usurping tyrannic. 
And green it will grow in my ain countree. 

It's hame and it's hame, hame fain would I be, 
O hame, hame, hame to my ain countree ! 
There 's nought now from ruin my country can save 
But the keys of kind heaven to open the grave. 
That all the noble martyrs who died for loyaltie 
May rise again and fight for their ain countree. 

It's hame and it's hame, hame fain would I be, 
O hame, hame, hame to my ain countree ! 

The great now are gane, a' who ventured to save ; 

The new green grass is growing aboon their bloody 
grave ; 

B ut the sun through the mirk blinks bly the in my e'e, 

I'll shine on ye yet in your ain countree. 



THE SHEPHERD SEEKS HIS TtLOWING 
HEARTH. 

The shepherd seeks his glowing hearth. 

The fox calls from the mountain, 
The folded flocks are white with rime, 

Swans seek the silent fountain ; 
And midnight starless is and drear, 

And Ae's wild waters swelling. 
Far up the lonesome greenwood glen, 

Where my fair maiden's dwelling. 

Wild is the night — green July's eve, 
Ne'er balmier seem'd or warmer ; 

For I sing thy name, and muse on thee, 
My mild and winsome charmer ; 

Thy bower sheds far its trysting light 
Through the dark air of December — 

Thy father's dreaming o'er his wealth, 

Thy mother's in her chamber. 

Now is the time for talk, my love. 

Soft sighing, mutual wishing, 
Heart-throbbings, interchange of vows, 

Words breathed mid holy kissing; 
All worldly maxims, wise men's rules, 

My raptured soul disdaincth ; 
For with my love the world is lost 

And all the world containeth. 



AWAKE, MY LOVE! 

Awake, my love! ere morning's ray 
Throws oflf night's weed of pilgrim gray ; 
Ere yet the hare, cower'd clo;<e from view, 
Licks from her fleece the clover dew : 
Or wild swan shakes her snowy wings, 
By hunters roused from secret springs: 
Or birds upon the boughs awake. 
Till green Arbigland's woodlands shake. 

She comb'd her curling ringlets down. 
Laced her green jupes, and clasp'd her shoon ; 
And from her home, by Preston-burn, 
Came forth the rival light of morn. 
The lark's songdropp'd, — now loud, now hush, — 
The goldspink answer'd from the bush ; 
The plover, fed on heather crop, 
Call'd from the misty mountain top. 

'Tis sweet, she said, while thus the day 
Grows into gold from silvery gray. 
To hearken heaven, and bush, and brake, 
Instinct with soul of song awake ; — 
To see the smoke, in many a wreath. 
Stream blue from hall and bower beneath, 
Where yon blithe mower hastes along 
With glittering scythe and rustic song. 

Yes, lovely one ! and dost thou mark 
7'he moral of yon carolling lark 1 
Takest thou from Nature's counsellor tongue 
The warning precept of her song 1 
Each bird that shakes the dewy grove 
Warms its wild note with nuptial love ; 
The bird, the bee, with various sound. 
Proclaim the sweets of wedlock round. 



MY AIN COUNTREE. 

The sun rises bright in France, 

And fair sets he ; 
But he has tint the blythe blink he had 

In my ain countree. 
Oh ! gladness comes to many, 

But sorrow comes to me, 
As I look o'er the wide ocean 

To my ain countree. 

Oh ! it's not my ain ruin 

That saddens aye my e'e, 
But the love I left in Galloway, 

Wi' bonnie bairns three ; 
My hamely hearth burn'd bonnie, 

And smiled my fair Marie, — 
I 've left a' my heart behind me, 

In my ain countree. 

The bud comes back to summer, 

An' the blossom to the bee, 
But I win back — oh never ! 

To my ain countree. 
I'm leal to the high heaven. 

Which will be leal to me ; 
An' thire I'll meet ye a' soon, 

Frae my ain countree. 



BERNARD BARTON. 



Bernard Barton was born in 1784, and 
was educated in one of the seminaries of the 
Society of Friends. He subsequently took up 
his residence at Woodbridge in Suffolk, where 
he held a situation in a banking-house. His 
first publication was an anonymous miscel- 
lany entitled " Metrical Effusions," which 
was followed in 1818 by " Poems by an Ama- 
teur," and in the next year by a volume under 
his proper signature, which was favourably 
noticed in the literary gazettes, and was re- 
printed from the third London edition in Phi- 
ladelphia. In 1826, he published "Napoleon 



and other Poems," and we believe he has 
since written several small works in prose 
and verse. From the Life and Correspond- 
ence of Lamb, by Sergeant Talfourd, we 
learn that Barton belonged to the circle of 
intimate friends in whose society that gentle- 
hearted humourist so much delighted. Many 
of Lamb's most familiar and characteristic 
letters were addressed to the Quaker poet. 

Barton's style is diffuse, but simple and 
graceful. His poetry is generally descriptive 
and meditative, tender and devoted, and ani- 
mated by cheerful views of life. 



SPIRITUAL WORSHIP. 

Though glorious, O God ! must thy temple have 
been 

On the day of its first dedication, [seen 

When the cherubim's wings widely waving were 

On high on the ark's holy station ; 

When even the chosen of Levi, though skill'd 

To minister, standing before thee. 
Retired from the cloud which the temple then fill'J, 

And thy glory made Israel adore thee ; 

Though awfully grand was thy majesty then, 
Yet the worship thy gospel discloses. 

Less splendid in pomp to the vision of men, 
Far surpasses the ritual of Moses. 

And by whom was that ritual for ever repeal'd, 
But by Him unto whom it was given 

To enter the oracle where is reveal'd 

Not the cloud, but the brightness of heaven 1 

Who having once enter'd, hath shown us the way, 
O Lord ! how to worship before thee ; 

Not with shadowy forms of that earlier day, 
But in spirit and truth to adore thee ; 

This, this is the worship the Saviour made known, 

When she of Samaria found him 
By the patriarch's well, sitting weary alone, 

With the stillness of noontide around him. 

How sublime, yet how simple, the homage he taught 
To her who inquired by that fountain, 

If Jehovah at Solyma's shrine would be sought, 
Or adored on Samaria's mountain ! 

Woman, believe me, the hour is near, 
When He, if ye rightly would hail Him, 

Will neither be worshipp'd exclusively here, 
Nor yet at the altar of Salem. 
102 



For God is a spirit, and they who aright 

Would perform the pure worship He loveth, 

In the heart's holy temple will seek, with delight, 
That spirit the Father approveth. 



TO THE SKYLARK. 

Bird of the free and fearless wing ! 

Up ! up ! and greet the sun's first ray, 
Until the spacious vvellun ring 

With thy enlivening matin lay ! 
I love to track thy heavenward way 

Till thou art lost to aching sight. 
And hear thy song, as blithe and gay 

As heaven above looks pure and bright. 

Songster of sky and cloud ! to thee 

Has heaven a joyous lot assign'd ; 
And thou, to hear those notes of glee. 

Would seem therein thy bliss to find : 
Thou art the first to leave behind, 

At d.iy's return, this lower earth ; 
And soaring, as on wings of wind, 

To spring whence light and life have birth. 

Bird of the sweet and taintless hour ! 

When dewdrops spangle o'er the lea, 
Ere yet upon the bending flower 

Has lit the busy humming bee; 
Pure as all nature is to thee. 

Thou with an instinct half divine, 
Wingest thy fearless flight so free 

Up toward a still more glorious shrine. 

Bird of the morn ! from thee might man, 

Creation's lord, a lesson take : 
If thou, whose instinct ill may scan 

The glories that around thee break, 



BERNARD BARTON. 



193 



Thus bidd'st a sleeping world awake 

T'o joy and praise — Oh ! how much more 

Should mind, immortal, earth forsake, 
And man look upward to adore ! 

Bird of the happy, heavenward song! 

Could but the poet act thy part, 
This soul, upborne on wings as strong 

As thought can give, from earth might start: 
And he, with far diviner art 

Than genius ever can supply. 
As thou the ear, might glad the heart. 

And bring down music from the sky ! 



CHILDREN OF LIGHT, 

Walk in the light! so shalt thou know 

That fellowship of love 
His Spirit only can bestow. 

Who reigns in light above. 
Walk in the light ! — and sin, abhorr'd, 

Shall ne'er defile again ; 
The blood of Jesus Christ the Lord 

Shall cleanse from every stain. 

Walk in the light ! — and thou shalt find 

Thy heart made truly His, 
Who dwells in cloudless light enshrined, 

In whom no darkness is. 
Walk in the light ! — and thou shalt own 

Thy darkness pass'd away. 
Because that light hath on thee shone 

In which is perfect day. 

Walk in the lio-ht ! — and e'en the tomb 

No fearful shade shall wear ; 
Glory shall chase away its gloom, 

For Christ hath conquer'd there ! 
Walk in the light! — and thou shalt be 

A path, though thorny, bright ; 
For God, by grace, shall dwell in thee, 

And God himself is light ! 



TO MARY. 

It is not alone while we live in the light 

Of friendship's kindling glance. 
That its beams so true, and so tenderly bright, 

Our purest joys can enhance : — 
But that ray shines on through a night of tears, 
And its light is round us in after years. 

Nor is it while yet on the listening ear 

The accents of friendship steal. 
That we know the extent of the joy so dear, 

Which its touching tones reveal : — 
'Tis in after moments of sorrow and pain, 
Their echo surpasses music's strain. 

Though years have roll'd by, dear Mary ! since we 

Have look'd on each other's face. 
Yet thy memory is fondly cherish'd by me, 

For my heart is its dwelling-place ; 
And, if on this earth we should meet no more, 
It must linger there still until life is o'er. 
25 



The traveller who journeys the live-long day 

Through some enchanting vale, — 
Should he, when the mists of evening are gray. 

Some neighbouring mountain scale, — 
Oh ! will he not stop, and look back to review 
The delightful retreats he has wander'd through 1 

So I, who have toil'd up life's steep hill 

Some steps, — since we parted last. 
Often pensively pause, and look eagerly still 

On the few bright spots I have pass'd : — 
And some of the brightest, dear Mary ! to me, 
Were the lovely ones I enjoy'd with thee. 

I know not how soon dark clouds may shade 

The valley of years gone by ; 
Or how quickly its ha})piest haunts may fade 

In the mists of an evening sky ; — 
But — till quench'd in the lustre of life's setting sun, 
I shall look back at times, as I now have done. 



TO A PROFILE. 

I KjfEW thee not ! then wherefore gaze 

Upon thy silent shadow there. 
Which so imperfectly portrays 

The form thy features used to wear 1 
Yet have I often look'd at thee. 
As if those lips could speak to me. 

I knew thee not! and thou couldst know. 

At best, but little more of one 
Whose pilgrimage on earth below 

Commenced, just ere thine own was done ; 
For few and fleeting days were thine, 
To hope or fear for lot of mine. 

Yet few and fleeting as they were. 

Fancy and feeling picture this. 
They prompted many a fervent prayer, 

Witness'd, perchance, a parting kiss ; 
And might not kiss, and prayer, from thee. 
At such a period, profit me 1 

Whether they did or not, I owe 
At least this tribute to thy worth; 

Though little all I can bestow. 
Yet fond affection gives it birth ; 

And prompts me, as thy shade I view. 

To bless thee, whom I never knew ! 



FAREWELL. 

Nat, shrink not from the word " farewell !" 
As if 'twere friendship's final knell ; 

Such fears may prove but vain : 
So changeful is life's fleeting day. 
Whene'er we sever — hope may say, 

" We part — to meet again !" 

E'en the last parting heart can know. 
Brings not unutterable wo, 

To souls that heavenward soar; 
For humble faith, with steadfast eye, 
Points to a brighter world on high, 
Where hearts that here at parting sigh. 

May meet — to part no more. 



LEIGH HUNT. 



James Henrv Leigh Hunt was born on the 

nineteenth of October, 1784, at Southgate in 
Middlesex. His father, a clergyman of the 
established church, was an American refu- 
gee, and his mother a sister of Benjamin 
We.st, President of the Royal Academy. He 
was educated at Christ's Hospital, where 
Lamb and Coleridge were his school-fellows; 
and was subsequently for some time in the 
office of an attorney; but he abandoned the 
study of the law to accept a place under govern- 
ment, which he held until the establishment 
of the Examiner, by himself and his brother, 
in 1809. Tlie Examiner was violent in its 
politics, and was for many years conducted 
with great ability and success. Hunt was 
several times prosecuted by the government, 
and was imprisoned two years in the Surrey 
jail for a libel on the Prince Regent. He co- 
vered the walls of his cell with garlands, how- 
ever, and wrote as industriously as ever. It was 
while a prisoner that he composed The Feast 
of the Poets, The Descent of Liberty, and The 
Story of Rimini. It was in this period, also, 
that he became acquainted with Lord Eyron. 
He has been censured, and I think justly, for 
his conduct towards the noble poet, respecting 
whose faults gratitude might have made him 
silent, for Byron had been a liberal friend when 
his friendship was serviceable to him. 

In 1816 Hunt established The Reflector, a 
quarterly magazine ; afierward, in conjunction 
with Shelley and Byron, The Liberal, and, 
with Hazlitt, The Round Table. He also 
published in weekly numbers The Indicator 
and The Companion, two of the most delight- 
ful series of essays in the English language. 
In the preface to the last edition of these 
papers he tells us that they " were written 
during times of great trouble with him, and 
helped him to see much of that fliir play be- 
tween his own anxieties and his natural cheer- 
fulness, of which an indestructible belief in 
the good and the beautiful has rendered him 
perhaps not undeserving." In 1810 he pub- 
lished a selection of his contributions to vari- 
ous periodicals under the title of The Seer, or 
Common-Places Refreshed, "to show that the 
more we look at any thing in this beautiful 



and abundant world with a desire to be 
pleased M'ilh it, the more we shall be reward- 
ed by the loving Spirit of the universe with 
discoveries which await only the desire." 
His other principal prose writings are Criti- 
cal Essays on the Performers of the London 
Theatres, and Recollections of Lord Byron and 
some of his Contemporaries. 

The best of Hunt's poems is The Story of 
Rimini. In the edition of his Poetical Works 
published byMoxoninl844, it is much altered: 
the morality is improved, and the catastrophe 
is conformed to history. Besides this and the 
other poems to which I have alluded, he has 
written Hero and Leander, The Palfrey, Cap- 
tain Sword and Captain Pen, Blue Stocking 
Revels or the Feast of Violets, The Legend 
of Florence, Miscellaneous Poems, and a vo- 
lume of Translations. 

One of Hunt's most apparent characteris- 
tics is his cheerfulness. His temperament is 
obviously mercurial. His fondness for the 
gayer class of Italian writers indicates a sym- 
pathy with southern buoyancy not often en- 
countered in English poetry. His versification 
is easy and playful; too much so, indeed, for 
imposing effect. He seems to have written 
generally under the inspiration of high ani- 
mal spirits. His sentiment is lively and ten- 
der, rather than serious and impressive. The 
reviewers have censured him with rather too 
much severity for occasional affectations. With 
a few exceptions on this score his Story of 
Rimini is a charming poem. The Legend of 
Florence, written at a later period, is one of 
the most original and captivating of modern 
plays. Many of his Epistles glow with a 
genial humour and spirit of fellowship which 
betray fine social qualities. He lives obvi- 
ously in his affections, and cultivates litera- 
ture with refined taste rather than with luke- 
warm assiduity. 

Hunt's intimacy with Shelley and Keats 
is well known to every one acquainted with 
the lives of those great poets. He is still, as 
in earlier days, a general favourite in society, 
and has more and warmer personal friends 
than almost any other literary man in Eng- 
land. 

194 



LEIGH HUNT. 



195 



FROM THE LEGEND OF FLORENCE. 

AGOLANTI AND HIS LADY. 

In all except a heart, and a black shade 
Of superstition, he is man enough ! 
Has a bold blood, large brain, and liberal hand 
As far as the purse goes ; albeit he likes 
The going to be blown abroad with trumpets. 
Nay, I won't swear he does not love his wife 
As well as a man of no sort of affection, 
Nor any domestic tenderness, can do so. 
He highly approves her virtues, talents, beauty: 
Thinks her the sweetest woman in all Florence, 
Partly, because she is, — partly, because 
She is his own, and glorilies his choice ; 
And therefore he does her the honour of making her 
The re[)resentative and epitome 
Of all he values, — public reputation, 
Private obedience, delighted fondness. 
Grateful return for his unamiableness. 
Love without bounds, in short, for his self-love : 
And as she finds it difficult, poor soul. 
To pay such reasonable demands at sight 
With the whole treasure of her heart and smiles. 
The gentleman lakes pity on — himself! 
Looks on himself as the most unresponded to 
And unaccountably ill-used bad temper 
In Tuscany ; rages at every word 
And look she gives another; and fills the house 
With miseries, which, because they ease himself 
And his vile spleen, he thinks her bound to suffer ; 
And then finds malice in her very suffering ! 

... And yet, observe now : — 
Such is poor human nature, at least such 
Is poor human inhuman nature in this man, 
That if she were to die, I verily think 
He'd weep, and sit at the receipt of pity, 
And call upon the gods, and think he loved her ! 



A DOME.STIC SCENE. 

Jt chamber hiin<T irilii purple, avd containing a cabinet pic- 
ture of the .Madonna, but olheririse little furnisked. 
Jlirolanti is here alone, until the entrance of Oinevra, 
tchite he is speakinij, upon which he closes the door over 
the picture, hands her a chair, and adjusts another for 
himself, but continues to stand. 

Ago. Every way she opposes me, even with arms 
Of peace and love. I bade remove that picture 
From this deserted room. Can she have had it 
Brought back this instant, knowing how my anger, 
Just though it be, cannot behold unmoved 
The face of suffering heaven 1 O, artifice 
In very piety ! 'Twere piety to veil it 
From our di-^course, and look another way. 

Gin. (^Clif-erfuHt/.) The world seems glad after 
its hearty drink 
Of rain. I fear'd, when you came back this morning. 
The shower had stopp'd you, or that you were ill. 

Ago. You fear'd ! you hoped. What fear you 
that I fear. 
Or hope for that I hope for ? A truce, madam, 
To these exordiums and pretended interests, 
Whose only shallow intent is to delay, 
Or to divert, the sole dire subject, — me. 
Soh ! you would see the spectacle ! you, who start 



At openings of doors arid falls of pins. 
Trumpets and drums quiet a lady's nerves; 
And a good hacking blow at a tournament 
Equals burnt feathers or hartshorn for a stimulus 
To pretty household tremblers. 

Gin. I express'd 
No wish to see the tournament, nor indeed 
Any thing, of my own accord; or contrary 
To your good judgment. 

Ago. O, of course not ! Wishes 
Are never express'd for, or by, contraries ; 
Nor the good judgment of an anxious husband 
Held forth as a pleasant thing to differ with. 

Gin. It is as easy as sitting in my chair 
To say, I will not go: and I will not. 
Be pleased to think that settled. 

Ago. The more easily 
As 'tis expected I should go, is it not ? 
And then you will sit happy at receipt 
Of letters from Antonio Kondinelli. 
Gin. Return'd unopen'd, sir. 
Ago. How many ? 
Gin. Three. 

Ago. You arecorrectasto those three. How many 
Open'd ? Your look, madam, is wondrous logical; 
Conclusive by mere pathos of astoiiishment ; 
And cramm'd witli scorn from pure unscornfulness. 
I have, 'tis true, strong doubts of your regard 
For him, or any one ; of your love of power 
None, as you knovr I have reason; though you take 
Ways of refined provokingness to wreak it. 
Antonio knows these fools you saw but now, 
And fools have foolish friendships, and bad leagues 
For getting a little power, not natural to them, 
Out of their laugh'd-at betters. Be it as it may, 
All this, I will not have these prying idlers 
Put my domestic troubles to the blush ; 
Nor you sit thus in ostentatious meekness 
Playing the victim with a pretty breath, 
And smiles that say " God help me !" Well, madam, 
What do you say ? 

Gin. I say I will do whatever 
You think best, and desire. 

Ago. And make the worst of it 
By whatsoever may mislead, and vex ? 
There — now you make a pretty sign, as though 
Your silence were compell'd. 

Gin. What can I say, 
Or what, alas ! not say, and not be chided ? 
You should not use me thus. I have not strength 

for it 
So great as you may think. My late sharp illness 
Has left me weak. 

Ago. I've known you weaker, madam, 
But never feeble enough to want the strength 
Of contest and perverseness. Oh, men too \ 
Men may be weak, even from the magnanimity 
Of strength itself; and women can take poor 
Advantages, that were in men but cowardice. 
Gin. (Aside) Dear Heaven ! what humblest 
doubts of our self-knowledge 
Should we not feel, when tyranny can talk thus 1 
Ago. Can you pretend, madam, with your sur- 
passing 
Candour and hea>'enly kindness, that you never 



196 



LEIGH HUNT. 



Utter'd one gentle-sounding word, not meant 
To give the hearer pain 1 me pain ] your hushand ? 
Whom in all evil thoughts you so pretend 
To be unlike. 

Gin. I cannot dare pretend it. 
I am a woman, not an angel. 

Ago. Ay, [then 

See there — you have ! you own it ! how pretend 
To make such griefs of every petty syllable, 
Wrung from myself by everlasting scorn ] 

Gin. One pain is not a thousand ; nor one wrong, 
Acknowledged and repented of, the habit 
Of unprovoked and unrepented years. 

Ago. Of unprovoki d ! Oh, let all provocation 
Take every brutish shape it can devise 
To try endurance with; taunt it in failure. 
Grind it in want, stoop it with family shames, 
Make gross the name of mother, call it fool. 
Pander, slave, coward, or whatsoever opprobrium 
Makes the soul swoon within its range, for want 
Of some great answer, terrible as it's wrong, 
And it shall be as nothing to this miserable, 
Mean, meek-voiced, most malignant lie of lies, 
This angel-mimicking non-provocation 
From one too cold to enrage, and weak to tread on ! 
You never loved me once — Vou loved me not — 
Never did — no — not when before the altar. 
With a mean coldness, a worldly-minded coldness 
And lie on your lips, you took me for your husband, 
Thinking to have a house, a purse, a liberty, 
By, but not for, the man you scorn'd to love ! 

Gin. I scorn'd you not — and knew not what 
scorn was — 
Being scarcely past a child, and knowing nothing 
But trusting thoughts and innocent daily habits. 
Oh, could you trust yourself — But why repeat 
What still is thus repeated day by day. 
Still ending with the question, " Why repeat?" 

[^Rigino and movinn- about.'\ 

You make the blood at last mount to my brain. 
And tax me past endurance. What have I done, 
Good God ! what have I done, that [ am thus 
At the mercy of a mystery of tyranny. 
Which from its victim demands every virtue, 
And brings it none 1 

Ago. I thank you madam, humbly, 
That was sincere at least. 

Gin. I beg your pardon. 
Anger is ever excessive, and speaks wrong. 

Ago. This is the gentle, patient, unprovoked 
And unprovoking, never-answering she ! 

Gin. Nay, nay, say on ; I do deserve it — I 
Who speak such evil of anger, and then am angry, 
Yet you might pity me too, being like yourself 
In fellowship there at least. 

Ago. A taunt in friendliness! 
Meekness's happiest condescension ! 

Gin. No, 
So help me heaven ! I but spoke in consciousness 
Of what was weak on both sides. There's a love 
In that, would you but know it, and encourage it. 
The consciousness of wrong, in wills not evil, 
Brings charity. Be you but charitable, 
And I am grateful, and we both shall learn. 

Ago, I am conscious of no wrong in this dispute, 



Nor when we dispute, ever,— except the wrong 

Done to myself by a will far more wilful, 

Because less moved, and less ingenuous. 

Let them get charity that show it. 

Gin. (u-fio has reseated her.ic/f.) I pray you, 

Let Fiordilisa come to me. My lips 

Will show you that I faint. 

[.Iffolaiili rimrs a bell on the table ; Fiordilifa enters to her 
mistress ] 

Ago. When you have seen your mistress well 
again. 
Go to Matteo ; and tell him, from herself. 
That 'tis her orders she be excused at present 
To all that come, her state requiring it, 
And convalescence. Mark you that addition. 
She's getting well; but to get well, needs rest. [Exit. 

Fi(rr. Needs rest ! alas! when will you let her rest, 
But in her grave? My lady ! My sweet mistress I 

[Jipplying a volatile to her temples.'] 
She knows me. He has gone : the Signer's gone. 
^A.tide.') She sighs, as though she mourn'd him. 

6'm. (/islening.) What's that] 

Fior. Nothing, madam ; I heard nothing. 

Gin. Every thing 
Gives me a painful wonder ; you, your face, [man 
These walls. My hand seems to me not more hu- 
Than animal ; and all things unaccountable. 
'Twill pass away. What's that? [An organ is heard.] 

Fior. Yes, I hear that. 
'Tis Father Anselmo, madam, in the chapel, 
Touching the new organ. In truth, I ask'd him, 
Thinking that, as the Signor is so moved 
By whatsoever speaks to him of religion. 
It might have done no harm to you and him, madam, 
To hear it while conversing. But he's old 
And slow, is the good father. 

[Oinevra kisses her, and then weeps abundantly.] 

Gin. Thank heaven ! thank heaven and the 
sweet sounds ! I have not 
Wept, Fiordilisa, now for many a day, 
And the sound freshens me ; loosens my heart. 

[Music is heard.] 
blessed music ! at thy feet we lie, 
Pitied of angels surely. 

Fior. Perhaps, madam, 
You will rest here, and try to sleep awhile? |^oe, 

Gin. No, Fiordilisa: (j-ising^ meeting what must 
Is half commanding it ; and in this breath 
Of heaven my mind feels duty set erect 
Fresh out of tears. Bed is for night, not day, 
When duty's done. So cheer we as we may. 



FANCY. 

Fancy's the wealth of wealth, the toiler's hope, 
The poor man's piecer-out; the art of nature. 
Painting her landscapes twice; the spirit of fact, 
As matter is the body ; the pure gift 
Of Heaven to poet and to child ; which he 
Who retains most in manhood, being a man 
In all things fitting else, is most a man ; 
Because he wants no human faculty, 
Nor loses one sweet taste of the sweet world. 



LEIGH HUNT. 



197 



TO LORD BYRON. 

ON llIS DErARTUKE FOR ITALY AND GREECE. 

SixcB you resolve, dear Byron, once again 
To taste tlie far-eyed freedom of the main, 
And as tlie coolness lessens in the breeze, 
Strike for warm shores that bathe in classic seas, — 
May all that hastens, pleases, and secures. 
Fair winds and skies, and a swift ship, be yours, 
Whose sidelong deck aflbrds, as it cuts on. 
An airy slope to lounge and read upon ; 
And may the sun, cool'd only by white clouds 
Make constant shadows of the sails and shrouds; 
And may there be sweet, watching moons at night, 
Or shows, upon the sea, of curious light; 
And morning wake with happy-blushing mouth. 
As though her husband still had "eyes of youth ;" 
While fancy, just as you discern from far 
I'he coasts of Virgil and of Sannazzar, 
May see the nymphs emerging, here and there, 
To tie up at the light their rolling hair. 

I see you now, half-eagerness, half-ease, 
Ride o'er the dancing freshness of thie seas ; 
I see you now (with fancy's eyesight too) 
Find, with a start, that lovely vision true. 
While on a sudden, o'er the horizon's line 
Phcsbus looks forth with his long glance divine. 
At which old ocean's white and shapely daughters 
Crowd in the golden ferment of the waters, 
And halcyons brood, and there's a glistering show 
()( harps midst bosoms and long arms of snow ; 
And from the breathing sea, in the God's eye, 
A gush of voices breaks up to the sky 
To hail the laureU'd bard, that goes careering by. 

And who, thus gifted, but must hear and see 
Wonders like these, approaching Italy 1 — 
Enchantress Italy, — who born again 
In Gothic fires, woke to a sphery strain, 
And rose and smiled, far lovelier than before, 
Copier of Greece and Amazon no more, 
But altogether a diviner thing. 
Fit for the Queen of Europe's second spring, 
With fancies of her own, and finer powers 
Not to enslave these mere outsides of ours, 
But bend the godlike mind, and crown it with her 
flowers. . 

Thus did she reign, bright-eyed, with that sweet 
tone 
Long in her ears; and right before her throne 
Have sat the intellectual Graces three. 
Music, and painting, and wing'd poetry. 
Of wliom were born those great ones, thoughtful- 
faced, 
That led the hierarchj' of modern taste ; — 
Heavenly composers, that with bow symphonious 
Drew out, at last, music's whole soul harmonious ; 
Poets, that knew how Nature should be woo'd, 
With frank address, and terms heart-understood ; 
And painters, worthy to be friends of theirs, 
Hands that could catch the very finest airs 
Of natural minds, and all that soul express 
Of ready concord, which was made to bless, 
And forms the secret of true amorousness. 



Not that our English clime, how sharp soe'er, 
Yields in ripe genius to the warmest sphere ; 
For what we want in sunshine out of doors, 
And the long leisure of abundant shores. 
By freedom, nay by sufferance, is supplied, 
And each man's sacred sunshine, his fire-side. 
But all the four great masters of our song. 
Stars that shine out amidst a starry throng, 
Have turn'd to Italy for added light. 
As earth is kiss'd by the sweet moon at night; — 
Milton for half his style, Chaucer for tales, 
Spenser for flowers to fill his isles and vales. 
And Shakspeare's self for frames already done 
To build his everlasting piles upon. 
Her genius is more soft, harmonious, fine ; 
Our's bolder, deeper, and more masculine: 
In short, as woman's sweetness to man's force, 
Less grand, but softening by the intercourse. 
So the two countries are, — so may they be, — 
England the high-soul'd man, the charmer Italy. 

But I must finish, and shall chatter less 
On Greece, for reasons which yourself may guess. 
Only remember what you promised me 
About the flask from dark-well'd Castally, — 
A draught, which but to think of, as I sit. 
Makes the room round me almost turn with wit. 
Gods ! What may not come true, what dream 

divine, 
If thus we are to drink the Delphic wine! 
Remember too elsewhere a certain town, 
Whose fame, you know, Caisar will not hand down. 

And i)ray, my Lord, in Italy take care. 
You that are poet, and have pains to bear. 
Of lovely girls, that step across the sight. 
Like Houris in a heaven of warmth and light, 
With rosy-cushion'd mouths, in dimples set, 
And ripe dark tresses and glib eyes of jet. 
The very language, from a woman's tongue. 
Is worth the finest of all others sung. 

And so adieu, dear Byron, — dear to me 
For many a cause, disinterestedly ; — 
First, for unconscious sympathy, when boys. 
In friendship, and the Muse's trying joys; — 
Next for that frank sur()rise, when Moore and you 
Came to my cage, like warblers kind and true, 
And told me, with your arts of cordial lying, 
How well I look'd, when you both thought me 

dying; — 
Next for a rank worn simply, and the scorn 
Of tho.se who trifle with an age free-born ; — 
For early storms, on fortune's basking shore. 
That cut precocious ripeness to the core ; — 
For faults unbidden, other's virtue's own'd ; 
Nay, unless Cant's to be at once enthroned. 
For virtues too, with whatsoever blended. 
And e'en were none possess'd, for none pretended ; — 
I^astly, for older friends, fine hearts, held fast 
Through every dash of chance, from first to last ; — 
For taking spirit as it means to be. — 
For a stretch'd hand, ever the same to me, — 
And total, glorious want of vile hypocrisy. 

Adieu, adieu : — I say no more. — God speed you ! 
Remember what we all expect, who read you. 
b2 



198 



LEIGH HUNT. 



THE FATAL PASSION.* 

Now why must I disturb a dream of bliss, 
And bring cold sorrow 'twixt the wedded kiss ? 
How mar the face of beauty, and disclose 
The weeping days that with the morning rose, 
And bring the bitter disappointment in, — 
The holy cheat, the virtue-binding sin, — 
The shock, that told this lovely, trusting heart, 
That she had given, beyond all power to part. 
Her hope, belief, love, passion, to one brother, 
Possession, (oh, the misery !) to another ! 

Some likeness was there 'twixt the two, — an air 
At times, a cheek, a colour of the hair, 
A tone, when speaking of indilFerent things ; 
Nor, by the scale of common measurings. 
Would you say more perhaps, than that the one 
Was more robust, the other tinelier spun ; 
That of the two, Giovanni was the graver, 
Paulo the livelier, and the more in favour. 

Some tastes there "were indeed, that would prefer 
Giovanni's countenance as the martialler; 
And 'twas a soldier's truly, if an eye 
Ardent and cool at once, drawn-back and high, 
An eagle's nose and a determined lip 
Were the best marks of manly soldiership. 
Paulo's was fashion'd in a different mould. 
And surely the more fine: for though 'twas bold, 
When boldness was required, and could put on 
A glowing frown as if an angel shone, 
Yet there was nothing in it one might call 
A stamp exclusive or professional, — 
No courtier's face, and yet its smile was ready, — 
No scholar's, yet its look was deep and steady, — 
No soldier's, for its power was all of mind, 
Too true for violence, and too refined. 
The very nose, lightly yet firmly wrought, 
Show'd taste ; the forehead a clear-spirited thought; 
Wisdom look'd sweet and inward from his eye ; 
And round his mouth was sensibility : — 
It was a face, in short, seem'd made to show 
How far the genuine flesh and blood could go ; — 
A morning glass of unaffected nature, — 
Something, that baffled looks of loftier feature, — 
The visage of a glorious human creature. 

If any points there were, at which they came 
Nearer together, 'twas in knightly fame, 
And all accomplishments that art may know, — 
Hunting, and princely hawking, and the bow, 
The rush together in the bright-eyed list, 
Fore-thoughted chess, the riddle rarely miss'd, 
And the decision of still knottier points. 
With knife in hand, of boar and peacock joints- 
Things, that might shake the fame that Tristan got, 
And bring a doubt on perfect Launcelot.-j- 
But leave we knighthood to the former part ; 
The tale I tell is of the human heart. 

The worst of Prince Giovanni, as his bride 
Too quickly found, was an ill-temper'd pride. 

* The Third Ciirito of Rimini. ~ 

+ The two famous knights of tho Rniind Table, great 
huntsmen, and of course sreat carvers. Boarsand pea- 
cocks, served up whole, the latter with the feathers on, 
were eminent dishes with the knights of old, and must 
have called forth all the exercise of this accomplishment. 



Bold, handsome, able (if he chose) to please, 
Punctual and right in common offices, 
He lost the sight of conduct's only worth. 
The scattering smiles on this uneasy earth, 
And on the strength of virtues of small weight, 
Claim'd tow'rds himself the exercise of great. 
He kept no reckoning with his sweets and sours ; — 
He'd hold a sullen countenance for hours. 
And then, if pleased to cheer himself a space, 
Look for the immediate rapture in your face, 
And wonder that a cloud could still be there, 
How small soever, when his own was fair. 
Yet such is conscience, — so design'd to keep 
Stern, central watch, though all things else go 

sleep. 
And so much knowledge of one's self there lies 
Cored, after all, in our complacencies. 
That no suspicion would have touch'd him more, 
Than that of wanting on the generous score; 
He would have whelm'd you with a weight of scorn, 
Been proud at eve, inflexible at morn. 
In short, ill-temper'd for a week to come, 
And all to strike that desperate error dumb. 
Ta.ste had he, in a word, for high-turn'd merit, 
But not the patience, nor the genial spirit. 
And so he made, 'twixt virtue and defect, 
A sort of fierce demand on your respect, 
Which, if assisted by his high degree. 
It gave him in some eyes a dignity, 
And struck a meaner deference in the many, 
Left him at last unloveable with any. 

From this complexion in the reigning brother 
His younger birth perhaps had saved the other. 
Born to a homage less gratuitous. 
He learn'd to win a nobler for his house; 
And both from habit and a genial heart. 
Without much trouble of the reasoning art. 
Found tliis the wisdom and the sovereign good, — 
To be, and make, as happy as he could. 
Not that he saw, or thought he saw, beyond 
His general age, and could not be as fond 
Of wars and creeds as any of his race, — 
But most he loved a happy human face; 
And wheresoe'er his fine, frank eyes were thrown, 
He struck the looks he wish'd for, with his own. 
So what but service leap'd where'er he went ! 
Was there a tilt-day or a tournament, — 
For welcome grace there rode not such another, 
Not yet for strength, except his lordly brother. 
Was there a court-day, or a feast, or dance. 
Or minstrelsy with roving plumes from France, 
Or summer par<y to the greenwood shade. 
With lutes prepared, and cloth on herbage laid, 
And ladies' laughter coming through the air, — 
He was the readiest and the blithest there ; 
And made the time so exquisitely pass 
With stories told with elbow on the grass, 
Or touch'd the music in his turn so finely. 
That all he did, they thought, was done divinely. 

The lovely stranger could not fail to see 
Too soon this difference, more especially 
As her consent, too lightly now, she thought. 
With hopes far different had been strangely bought; 
And many a time the pain of that neglect 
Would strike in blushes o'er her self-respect : 



LEIGH HUNT. 



199 



But since the ill was cureless, she applied 
With busy virtue to resume her pride, 
Aud hoped to value her sulimissive heart 
On playing well a patriot daughter's part, 
Trying her new-found duties to prefer 
To what a fiither might have owed to her. 
The very day too when her first surprise 
Was full, kind tears had come into her eyes 
On finding, by his care, her private room 
Furnish'd, like magic, from her own at home ; 
The very books and all transported there. 
The leafy tapestry, and tiie crimson chair, 
The lute, the glass tliat told the shedding hours, 
The little urn of silver for the flowers, 
The frame for hroidering, with a piece half done, 
And the white falcon, basking in the sun, 
Who, when he saw her, sidled on his stand. 
And twined his neck against her trembling hand. 
But what had tuuch'd her nearest, was the thought, 
That if 'twere destined for her to be brought 
To a sweet mother's bed, the joy would be 
Giovanni's too, and his her family : — 
He seem'd already father of her child, [smiled. 
And on the nestling pledge in patient thought she 
Yet then a ])ang would cross her, and the red 
In either downward cheek startle and spread. 
To think that he, who was to have su<-h part 
In joys like these, had never shared her heart; 
But then she chased it with a sigh austere ; 
And did she chance, at times like these, to hear 
Her husband's footstep, she would haste the more. 
And with a double smile open the door, 
And hope his day had worn a happy face ; 
Ask how his soldiers pleased him, or the (;hase, 
Or what new court had sent to win his sovereign 
grace. 

The prince, at this, would bend on her an eye 
Cordial enough, and kiss her tenderly ; 
Nor, to say truth, was he in general slow 
'I'o accept attentions, flattering to bestow ; 
But then meantime he took no generous pains, 
By mutual pleasing, to secure his gains; 
He enter'd not, in turn, in her delights. 
Her books, her flowers, her taste for rural sights ; 
Nay scarcely her sweet singing minded he, 
Unless his pride was roused by company ; 
Or when to please him, after martial play. 
She strain'd her lute to some old fiery lay 
Of fierce Orlando, or of Ferumbras, 
Or Ryan's cloak, or bow by the red grass 
In battle you might know where Richard was. 

Yet all the while, no doubt, however stern 
Or cold at times, he thought he loved in turn. 
And that the joy he took in her svveet ways, 
The pride he felt when she excited praise. 
In short, the enjoyment of his own good pleasure. 
Was thanks enough, and pas.sion beyond measure. 

She, had she loved him might have thought so too: 
For what will love's exalting not go through, 
Tdl long neglert, and utter selfishness, 
Shame the fond pride it lakes in its distress 1 
But ill prepared was she, in her hard lot, 
To fancy merit whore she found it not, — 
She, who had been bcsrniled, — she, who was made 
Within a gentle bosom to be laid, — 



To bless and to be bless'd, — to be heart-bare 
To one who found his better'd likeness there, — 
To think for ever with him, like a bride, — 
To haunt his eye, like taste personified, — 
To double bis delight, to share his sorrow. 
And like a morning beam, to wake him every 
morrow. 

Paulo, meantime, who ever since the day 
He saw her sweet looks bending o'er his way. 
Had stored them up, unconsciously, aa graces 
By which to judge all other forms and faces. 
Had learnt, I know not how, the secret snare. 
Which gave her up, tliat evening, to his care. 
Some babbler, may be, of old Guido's court, 
Or foolish friend had told him, half in sport: 
But to his heart the fatal flattery went; 
And grave he grew, and inwardly intent. 
And ran back, in his mind, with sudden spring, 
Look, gesture, smile, speech, silence, every thing. 
E'en what before had seem'd inditference. 
And read them over in another sense. 
Then would he blush with sudden self-disdain. 
To think how fanciful he was, and vain ; 
And with half-angry, half-regretful sigh, 
Tossing his chin, and feigning a free eye, 
Breathe off, as 'twere, the idle tale, and look 
About him for his falcon or his book, 
Scorning that ever he should entertain [pain. 

One thought that in the end might give his brother 

This start however came so often round, — 
So often fell he in deep thought, and found 
Occasion to renew his carelessness, 
Yet every time the power grown less and less. 
That by degrees, half-wearied, half-inclined. 
To the sweet struggling image he resign'd ; 
And merely, as he thought, to make the best 
Of what by force would come about his breast. 
Began to bend down his admiring eyes 
On all her touching looks and qualities, 
Turning their sha)iely sweetness every way, 
Till 'twas his food and habit day by day, 
And she became companion of his thought; 
Silence her genlleness before him brought, 
Society her sense, reading her books. 
Music her voice, every sweet thing her looks, 
Which sometimes seem'd, when he sat fix'd awhile. 
To steal beneath his eyes with upward smile 
And did he stroll into some lonely place, 
Under the trees, upon the thick soft grass, 
How charming, would he think, to see her here ! 
How heigliten'd then, and perfect would appear 
The two divinest things in earthly lot, 
A lovely woman in a rural spot ! 

Thus daily went he on, gathering sweet pain 
About his fancy, till it thrill'd again : 
And if his brother's image, less and less. 
Startled him up from his new idleness, 
'T was not — he fancied, — that he reason'd worse, 
Or felt less scorn of wrong, but the reverse. 
That one should think of injuring another. 
Or trenching on his peace, — this too a brother, — 
And all from selfishness and pure weak will. 
To him seem'd murvellous and imjiossible. 
'T is true, thought he. on(^ being more there was. 
Who might meantime have weary hours to pass, — 



200 



LEIGH HUNT. 



One weaker too to bear them, — and for whom 1 — 
No matter ; — he could not reverse her doom ; 
And so he sigh'd and smiled, as if one thought 
Of paltering could suppose that he was to be caught. 

Yet if she loved him, common gratitude, 
If not, a sense of what was fair and good, 
Besides his new relationship and right, 
Would make him wish to please her all he might; 
And as to thinking, — where could be the harm, 
If to his heart he kept its secret charm 1 
He wish'd not to himself another's blessing. 
But then he might console for not possessing; 
And glorious things there were, which but to see 
And not admire, were mere stupidity : 
He might as well object to his own eyes 
For loving to behold the fields and skies, 
His neighbour's grove, or story-painted hall ; 
'T was but the taste for what was natural ; 
Only his fav'rite thought was loveliest of them all. 

Concluding thus and happier that he knew 
His ground so well, near and more near he drew ; 
And, sanction'd by his brother's manner, spent 
Hours by her side, as happy as well-meant. 
He read with her, he rode, he Irain'd her hawk, 
He spent still evenings in delightful talk. 
While she sat busy at her broidery frame ; 
Or touch'd the lute with her, and when they came 
To some fine part, prepared her for the pleasure. 
And then witii double smile stole on the measure. 

Then at the tournament, — who there but she 
Made him more gallant still than formerly, 
Couch o'er his tighten'd lance with double force, 
Pass like the wind, sweeping down man and horse. 
And franklier then than ever, midst the shout 
And dancing trumpets ride, uncover'd, round 

about ] 
His brother only, more than hitherto, 
He would avoid, or sooner let subdue. 
Partly from something strange unfelt before, 
Partly because Giovanni sometimes wore 
A knot his bride had work'd him. green and gold: — 
For in all things with nature did she hold; 
And while 'twas being work'd, her fancy was 
Of sunbeams mingling with a tuft of grass. 

Francesca from herself but ill could hide 
What pleasuce now was added to her side, — 
How placidly, yet fast, the days flew on 
Thus link'd in white and loving unison ; 
And how the chair he sat in. and the room, 
Began to look, when he had fail'd to come. 
But as she better knew the cause than he, 
She seem'd to have the more necessity 
For struggling hard, and rousing al! her pride ; 
And so she did at first ; she even tried 
To feel a sort of anger at his care : 
But these extremes brought but a kind despair ; 
And then she only spoke more sweetly to him 
And found her failing eyes give looks that melted 
through him. 

Giovanni too, who felt relieved indeed 
To see another to his place sucre^d. 
Or rather filling up some trifling hours. 
Better spent elsewhere, and beneath his powers, 
Left the new tic to strengthen dav by day, 
Talk'd less and less, and longer kept away, 



Secure in his self-love and sense of right, 

7^hat he was welcome most, come when he might. 

And doubtless, they, in their still finer sense, 

With added care repaid this confidence, 

Turning their thoughts from his abuse of it. 

To what on their own parts was graceful and was fit. 

Ah now, ye gentle pair, — now think awhile. 
Now, while ye still can think, and still can smile ; 
Now, while your generous hearts have not been 

grieved 
Perhaps with something not to be retrieved. 
And ye have still, within, the power of gladness, 
From self-resentment free, and retrospective mad- 
ness ! 
So did they think — but partly from delay. 
Partly from fancied ignorance of the way. 
And most from feeling the bare contemplation, 
Give them fresh need of mutual consolation. 
They scarcely tried to see each other less. 
And did but meet with deeper tenderness. 
Living, from day to day, as they were used, 
Only with graver thoughts, and smiles reduced, 
And sighs more frequent, which, when one would 

heave. 
The other long'd to start up and receive. 
For whether some suspicion now had cross'd 
Giovanni's mind, or whether he had lost 
More of his temper lately, he would treat 
His wife with petty scorns, and starts of heat. 
And, to his own omissions proudly blind, 
O'erlook the pains she took to make him kind. 
And yet be angry, if he thought them less; 
He found reproaches in her meek distress, 
Forcing her silent tears, and then resenting. 
Then almost angrier grown from half repenting, 
And, hinting, at the last, that some there were 
Better perhaps than he, and tastefuller, 
And these, for what he knew, — he little cared. — 
Might please her, antl be pleased, though he de- 

spair'd. 
Then would he quit the room, and half-disdain 
Himself for being in so harsh a strain. 
And venting thus his temper on a woman ; 
Yet not the more for that changed he in common. 
Or took more pains to please lier, and be near: — 
What! should he truckle to a woman's tear? 

At times like lhe.=e the princess tried to shun 
The face of Paulo as too kind a one ; 
And shutting up her tears with final sigh, 
Would walk into the air, and see the sky. 
And feel about her all the garden green. 
And hear the birds that shot the covert boughs 
between. 
A noble range it was, of many a rood, 
Wall'd round with trees, and ending in a wood: 
Indeed the whole was leafy ; and it had 
A winding stream about it. clear and glad, 
•That danced from shade to shade, and on its way 
Seem'd smiling with delight to feel the day. 
There was the pouting rose, both red and white, 
The flamy heart's-ease, flush'd with purple light. 
Blush-hiding strawberry, sunny-colour'd box. 
Hyacinth, handsome with its clustering locks, 
The lady lily, looking gently down. 
Pure lavender, to lay in bridal gown. 



LEIGH HUNT. 



201 



The daisy, lovely on both sides, — in short. 

All the sweet cups to which the bees resort, 

With plots of grass, and perfumed walks between 

Of citron, honeysuckle, and jessamine, 

With orange, whose warm leaves so finely suit, 

And look as if they shade a golden fruit ; 

And midst the flowers, turf 'd round beneath a shade 

Of circling pines, a babbling fountain play'd. 

And 'twixt their shafts you saw the water bright. 

Which through the darksome tops glimnier'd with 

show'ring light. 
So now you walk'd beside an odorous bed 
Of gorgeous hues, white, azure, golden, red ; 
And now turn'd off into a leafy walk. 
Close and continuous, fit for lovers' talk ; 
And now pursued the stream, and as you trod 
Onward and onward o'er the velvet sod, 
Felt on your face an air, watery and sweet, 
And a new sense in your soft-lighting feet; 
And then perhaps you enter'd upon shades, 
Pillow'd with dells and uplands 'twixt the glades, 
Through which the distant palace, now and then, 
Look'd lordly forth with many-window'd ken ; 
A land of trees, which reaching round about. 
In shady blessing stretch'd their old arms out, 
With spots of sunny opening, and with nooks, 
To lie and read in, sloping into brooks, 
Where at her drink you started the slim deer, 
Retreating lightly with a lovely fear. 
And all about, the birds kept leafy house. 
And sung and sparkled in and out the boughs; 
And all about, a lovely sky of blue 
Clearly was felt, or down the leaves laugh'd through; 
And here and there, in every part, were seats, 
Some in the open walks, some in retreats ; 
With bowering leaves o'erhead. to which the eye 
Look'd up half-sweetly and half-awfrdly, — 
Places of nestling green, for poets made. 
Where, when the sunshine struck a yellow shade, 
The rugged trunks, to inward peeping sight, 
Throng'd in dark pillars up the gold green light. 

But 'twixt the wood and llowery walks, halfway, 
And form'd of both, the loveliest portion lay, 
A spot, that struck you like enchanted ground : — 
It was a shallow dell, set in a mound 
Of sloping shrubs, that mounted by degrees. 
The birch and poplar mix'd with heavier trees ; 
From under which, sent through a marble spout. 
Betwixt the dark wet green, a rill gush'd out. 
Whose low, sweet talking seem'd as if it said 
Something eternal to that happy shade. 
The ground within was lawn, with plots of flowers 
Hcap'd towards the centre, and with citron bowers ; 
And in the midst of all, cluster'd with bay 
And myrtle, and just gleaming to the day, 
Lurk'd a pavilion, — a delicious sight, — 
Small, marble, wcll-proportion'd, niellowy white. 
With yellow vine-leaves sprinkled, — but no more, — 
And a young orange either side the door. 
The door was to the wood, forward, and square, 
The rest was domed at top, and circular; 
And through the dome the only light came in, 
Tinged, as it enter'd, with the vine-leaves thin. 

It was a beauteous piece of ancient skill. 
Spared from the rage of war, and perfect still ; 
26 



By some supposed the work of fairy hands, 
Famed for luxurious taste, and choice of lands, — 
Alcina, or Morgana, — who from fights 
And errant fame envcigled amorous knights. 
And lived with them in a long round of blisses, 
Feasts, concerts, baths, and bower-cnshaded kisses. 
But 'twas a temple, as its sculpture told. 
Built to the nymphs that hainitcd there of old ; 
For o'er the door was carved a sacrifice 
By girls and shepherds brought, v^'ith reverend eyes, 
Of sylvan drinks and food, siniple and sweet. 
And goats with struggling horns and planted feet : 
And round about, ran on a line with this 
In like relief, a world of Pagan bliss, 
That show'd.in various scenes, the nymphs them- 
selves : 
Some by the water-side on bowery shelves 
Leaning at will, — some in the water sporting 
With sides half swelling forth, and looks of courting, 
Some in a flowery dell, hearing a swain 
Play on his pipe, till the hills ring again, — 
Some tying up their long moist hair, some sleeping 
Under the trees, with fauns and satyrs peeping, — 
Or sidelong-eyed, pretending not to see 
'J'he latter in the brakes come creepingly, 
While from their careless urns, lying aside 
In the long grass, the straggling waters slide. 
Never, be sure, liefore or since was seen 
A summer-house so fine in such a nest of green. 

All the green garden, flower-bed, shade, and plot, 
Francesca loved, but most of all this spot. 
Whenever she walk'd forth, wherever went. 
About the grounds, to this at last she bent: 
Here she had brought a lute and a few books ; 
Here would she lie for hours, with grateful looks 
Thanking at heart the sunshine and the leaves. 
The vernal rain-drops counting from the eaves, 
And all that promising, calm smile we see 
In nature's face, when we look patiently. 
Then would she think of heaven; and you might 

hear ' 
Sometimes when every thing was hush'd and clear. 
Her gentle voice from out those shades emerging, 
Singing the evening anthem to the virgin. 
The gardeners and the rest, who served the place. 
And blest whenever they beheld her face, 
Knelt when they heard it, bowing and uncover'd, 
And felt as if in air some sainted beauty hover'd. 

One day, — 'twas on a summer afternoon, 
When airs and gurgling brooks are best in tune, 
And grasshoppers are loud, and day-work done, 
And shades have heavy outlines in the sun, — 
The princess came to her accustom'd bower 
To get her, if she could, a soothing hour, 
Trying, as she was used, to leave her cares 
Without, and slumberously enjoy the airs. 
And the low-talking leaves, and that cool light 
The vines let in, and all that hushing sight 
Of closing wood seen through the opening door. 
And distant plash of waters tumbling o'er. 
And smell of citron blooms, and fifty luxuries more. 

She tried, as usual, for the trial's sake, 
For even that diminish'd her hoart-ache ; 
And never yet, how ill soe'er at ease. 
Came she for nothing midst the flowers and trees. 



202 



LEIGH HUNT. 



Yet how it was she knew not, hut that day, 
She seem'd to feel too lightly home away, — 
Too much relieved, — too much inclined to draw 
A careless joy from every thing she saw, 
And looking round her with a new-horn eye, 
As if some tree of knowledge had heen nigh, 
To taste of nature, primitive and free. 
And hask at ease in her heart's liberty. 

Painfully clear those rising thoughts appear'd, 
Witii something dark at bottom that she fear'd ; 
And turning from the lields her thoughtful look, 
She reach'd o'er head, and took her down a book, 
And fell to reading with as iix'd an air. 
As though she had been wrapt since morning there. 

'T was Launcelot of the Lake, a bright romance, 
That, like a trumpet, made young pulses dance. 
Yet had a softer note that shook still more ; — 
Slie had begun it but the day before. 
And read with a full heart, half-sweet, half-sad. 
How old King Ban was spoii'd of all he had 
But one fair castle: how one summer's day 
With his fair queen and child he went away 
To ask the great King Arthur for assistance; 
How reaching by himself a hill at distance. 
He turn'd to give his castle a last look. 
And saw its far white face : and Iiow a smoke, 
As he was looking, burst in volumes forth, 
And good King Ban saw all tliat he was worth, 
And his fair castle, burning to the ground. 
So that his wearied pulse felt over-wound. 
And he lay down, and said a prayer apart 
For those he loved, and broke his poor old heart. 
Then read she of the queen witli her you:ig child, 
How she came up, and nearly had gone wild. 
And how in journeying on in her despair, 
She reach'd a lake and met a laiiy there, 
Who pitied her, and took the baby sweet 
Into her arms, when lo, with cli/sing feet 
She sprang up all at once, like bird from brake. 
And vanish'd with him underneath the lake. 
The mother's feelings we as well may pass : — 
The fairy of the place that lady was. 
And Launcelot (so the hoy was call'd) became 
Her inmate, till in search of knightly fame 
He went to Arthur's court, and play'd his part 
So rarely, and display 'd so frank a heart, 
That what with all his charms of look and limb, 
The Queen Geneura fell in love with him : 
And here, with growing interest in her reading. 
The princess, doubly iix'd was now proceeding. 

Ready she sat with one hand to turn o'er 
The leaf, to which her thoughts ran on belbre, 
The other propping her white brow, and throwing 
Its ringlets out, under the skylight glowing. 
So sat she fix'd ; and so observed was she 
Of one, who at the door stood tenderly, — 
Paulo, — who from a window seeing her 
Go straight across the lawn, and guessing where 
Had thought she was in tears, and found, that day, 
His usual etforts vain to keep away. 
" May I come in ?" said he : — it made her start, — 
That smiling voice ; — she colour'd, press'd her 

heart 
A moment, as for breath, and then with free 
And usual tone said, " yes, — certainly." 



There 's wont to be, at conscious times like these, 

An affectation of a bright-eyed ease. 

An air of something quite serene and sure. 

As if to seem so, were to be secure : 

With this the lovers met, with this they spoke, 

With this they sat down to the self-same book, 

And Paulo, by degrees, gently embraced 

With one permitted arm her lovely waist ; 

And both their cheeks, like peaches on a tree, 

Lean'd with a touch together, thrillingly ; 

And o'er the book they hung, and nothing said. 

And every lingering page grew longer as they read. 

As thus they sat, and felt with leaps of heart 
Their colour change, they came upon the part 
Where fjiid Geneura, with her flame long nurst, 
Smiled upon Launcelot when he kiss'd her first: 
That touch, at last, through every fibre slid ; 
And Paulo turn'd, scarce knowing what he did, 
Only he felt he could no more dissemble. 
And kiss'd her, mouth to mouth, all in a tremble. 
Sad were those hearts, and sweet was that long kiss : 
Sacred be love from sight, whate'er it is. 
The world was all forgot, the struggle o'er, 
Desperate the joy, — That day they read no more. 



KOSCIUSKO. 

'Tts like thy patient valour thus to keep, 
Great Kosciusko, to the rural shade, 
While freedom's ill-found amulet still is made 

Pretence for old aggression, and a heap 

Of sellish mockeries. There, as in the sweep 
Of stormier fields, thou earnest with thy blade, 
Transform'd, not inly altcr'd, to the spade. 

Thy never-yielding right to a calm sleep. [wit 

Nature, 'twould seem, would leave to man's worse 

The small and noisier parts of this world's frame, 
And keep the calm green amplitudes of it 

Sacred from fopperies and inconstant blame. 

Cities Tnay change, and sovereigns; but 'tis fit, 

Thou, and the country old, be still the same. 



ARIADNE. 

A FK A GHENT. 

The moist and quiet morn was scarcely breaking 
When Ariadne in her bower was waking; 
Her eyelids still were closing, and she heard 
But indistinctly yet a little bird. 
That in the leaves o'erhead, waiting the sun, 
Seem'd answering another distant one. 
She waked, but stirr'd not, only just to please 
Her pillow-nestling cheek ; while the full seas, 
The birds, the leaves, the lulling love o'ernight, 
The happy thought of the returning light. 
The sweet, self-will'd content, conspired to keep 
Her senses lingering in the field of sleep ; 
And with a little smile she seem'd to say, 
"I know my love is near me, and 'tis day." 



LEIGH HUNT. 



203 



MAHMOUD. 

There came a man, making his hasty moan 
Before the Sultan Mahmoud on his throne, 
And cryinaf out — " My sorrow is my right, 
And I will see the Sultan, and to-night." 
"Sorrow," said Mahmoud, "is a reverend thing: 
I recognise its right, as king with king ; 
Speak on." " A fiend has got into my house," 
Exclaim'd the staring in.ni, "and tortures us: 
One of thine officers ; — he comes, the ahhorr'd. 
And takes possession of my house, my hoard. 
My bed : I have two daughters and a wife, [life." 
And the wild villain comes, and makes me mad with 
" Is he there now 1" said Mahmoud. "No; he left 
The house when I did, of my wits hereft; 
And laugh'd me down the street, because I vow'd 
I'd bring the prince himself to lay him in his shroud. 
I'm mad with want — I'm m;id with misery, [thee!" 
And O thou Sultan Mahmoud, God cries out for 

The Sultan comforted the man, and said, 
" Go home, and I will send thee wine and bread," 
(For he was poor,) " and other comforts. Go ; 
And, should the wretch return, let Sultan Mah- 
moud know." 

In three days' time, with haggard eyes and beard. 
And shaken voice, the suitor re-appear'd, [word, 
And said, " He's come." — Mahmoud said not a 
But rose and took four slaves, each with a sword. 
And went with the vex'd man. They reach the place. 
And hear a voice, and see a woman's face. 
That to the window flutter'd in aH'right: 
"Go in," said Mahmoud, "and put out the light ; 
But tell the females first to leave the room ; 
And when the drunkard follows them, we come." 

The man went in. There was a cry, and hark ! 
A talile falls, the window is struck dark : 
Forth rush the breathless women ; and behind 
With curses comes tiie fiend in desperate mind. 
In vain : the sabres soon cut short the strife, [life. 
And chop theshriekingwretch, anil drink hisbloody 

"Now lifrlit the light," the Sultan cried aloud. 
'Twas done ; he took it in his hand, and bow'd 
Over the corpse, and look'd upon the face ; 
Then turn'd, and knelt, and to the throne of grace 
Put up a prayer, and from his lips there crept 
Some gentle words of pleasure, and he wept. 

In reverent silence the beholders wait, 
Then bring him at his call both wine and meat; 
And when he had rcfresh'd his noble heart. 
He bade his host be blest, and rose up to depart. 

The man amazed, all mildness now, and tears, 
Fell at the Sultan's feet with many prayers. 
And begg'd him to vouchsafe to tell his slave 
The reason first of that command he gave 
About the light ; then, when he saw the face. 
Why he knelt down; and. lastly, how it was 
That fare so poor as his detain'd him in the place. 

The Sultan said, with a benignant eye, 
" Since first I saw thee come, and heard thy cry, 
I could not rid me of a dread, that one 
By whom such daring villanies were done 
Must be some lord of mine, ay, e'en perhaps a son. 
Whoe'er he was, I knew my task, but fear'd 
A father's heart, in case the worst appear'd : 



For this I had the light put out; but when 
I saw the face, and found a stranger slain, 
I knelt and thank'd the sovereign Arbiter, 
Whose work I had perform'd through pain and fear; 
And then I rose and was refresh'd willi food, 
The first time since thy voice had marr'd my soli- 
tude." 



POWER AND GENTLENE.SS. 

I've thought, at gentle and ungentle hour. 
Of many an act and giant shape of power ; 
Of the old kings with high exacting looks, 
Sceptred and globed ; of eagles on their rock.s, 
With straining feet, and tbiil fierce mouth and drear. 
Answering the strain with downward drag austere ; 
Of the rich-headed lion, whose huge frown 
All his great nature, gathering, seems to crown ; 
Of towers on hills, with foreheads out of sight 
In clouds, or shown us by the thunder's light, 
Or ghastly prison, that eternally 
Holds its blind visage out to tlie lone sea; 
And of all sunless, subterranean deej)S 
The creature makes, who listens while he sleeps, 
.\varice ; and then of those old earthly cones, 
That stride, they say, over heroic bones ; 
And those stone heaps Egyptian, whose small doors 
Look like low dens under precipitous shores; 
And him, great Memnon, that long sitting by 
In seeming idleness, with stony eye. 
Sang at the morning's touch, like poetry ; 
And then of all the fierce and bitter fruit 
Of the proud planting of a tyrannous foot, — 
Of bruised rights, and flourishing bad men. 
And virtue wasting heavenwards from a den ; 
Brute force, and fury ; and the devilish drouth 
Of the fool cannon's ever-gaping mouth ; 
And the bride-widowing sword ; and the har.sh bray 
The sneering trumpet sends across the fray ; 
And all which lights the people-thinning star 
That selfishness invokes, — the horsed war, 
Panting along with many a bloody mane. 

I've thought of all this pride, and all this pain, 
And all the insolent plenitudes of power. 
And I declare, by this most quiet hour, 
Which holds in different tasks by the fire-light 
Me and my friends here, this delightful night. 
That power itself has not one half the might 
Of gentleness. 'Tis want to all true wealth ; 
The uneasy madman's force, to the wise health ; 
Blind downward beating, to the eyes that see; 
Noise to persuasion, doubt to certainty ; 
The consciousness of strength in enemies. 
Who must be strain'd upon, or else they rise ; 
The battle to the moon, who all the while. 
High out of hearing, passes with her smile; 
The tempest, trampling in his scanty run, 
To the whole globe, that basks about the sun ; 
Or as all shrieks and clangs, with which a sphere, 
Undone and fired, could rake the midnight ear. 
Compared with that vast dumbness nature keeps 

Throughout her starry deeps, 
Most old, and mild, and awful, and unbroken. 
Which tells a talc of peace beyond whate'er was 
spoken. 



204 



LEIGH HUNT. 



THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS. 

KixG Fhancis was a hearty king, and loved a 
royal sport, 
And one day, as his lions fought, sat looking on the 

court ; 
The nobles fiU'd the benches, and the ladies in their 

pride, 
And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with 

one for whom he sigli'd : 
And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crown- 
ing show, 
Valour and love, and a king above, and the royal 

beasts below. [ jaws ; 

Ramp'd and roar'd the lions, with horrid laughing 
They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a 

wind went with their paws ; 
With wallowing might and stilled roar they roH'd 

on one another, 
Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a tliun- 

derous smother ; 
The bloody foam above the bars came whisking 

through the air ; 
Said Francis then, " Faith, gentlemen, we're better 

here tiian there." 
De Lorge's love o'erheard the king, a beauteous 

lively dame 
Vv'ith smiling lips and sharp bright eyes, which 

alway seem'd the same ; 
She thought, the count my lover is brave as brave 

can be ; 
He surely would do wondrous things to show his 

love of me ; 
King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is 

divine ; 
I'll drop my glove to prove his love ; great glory 

shall be mine. 
She drop[)'d her glove to prove his love, then look'd 

at him and smiled ; [wild : 

He bow'd, and in a moment leap'd among the lions 
The leap was quick, return was quick, he has re- 

g.iin'd the place. 
Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in 

the lady's face. 
" By God !" said Francis, " rightly done !" and 

he rose from where he sat ; 
" No love," quoth he, " but vanity, sets love a task 

like that." 



AN ANGEL IN THE HOUSE. 

How sweet it were, if without feeble fright, 
Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight, 
An angel came to us, and we could bear 
To see him issue from the silent air 
At evening in our room, and bend on ours 
His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers 
News of dear friends, and children who have never 
Been dead indeed, — as we shall know for ever. 
Alas ! we think not what we daily see 
About our hearths, — angels, that are to be, 
Or may be if they will, and we prepare 
Their souls and ours to meet in happy air, — 
A child, a friend, a wife whose soft heart sings 
In unison with ours, breeding its future wings. 



A HEAVEN UPON EARTH. 

For there are two heavens, sweet, 
Both made of love, — one, inconceivable 
Even by the other, so divine it is; 
The other, far on this side of the stars, 
By men call'd home, when some blest pair are met 
As we are now ; sometimes in happy talk, 
Sometimes in silence, each at gentle task 
Of book, or household need, or meditation. 
By summer-moon, or curtain'd fire in frost; 
And by degrees there come, — not always come, 
Yet mostly, — other, smaller inmates there. 
Cherubic-faced, yet growing like those two. 
Their pride and playmates, not without meek fear, 
Since God sometimes to his own cherubim 
Takes those sweet cheeks of earth. And so twixtjoy. 
And love, and tears, and whatsoever pain 
Man fitly shares with man, these two grow old; 
And if indeed blest thoroughly, they die 
In the same spot, and nigh the same good hour. 
And setting suns look heavenly on their grave. 



THE RAVENNA PINE FOREST. 

A HEAVY spot the forest looks at first, 
To one grim shade condemn'd, and sandy thirst, 
Chequer'd with thorns, and thistles run to seed. 
Or plashy pools half-cover'd with green weed. 
About whose sides the swarming insects fry 
In the hot sun, a noisome company ; 
But, entering more and more, they quit the sand 
At once, and strike upon a grassy land. 
From which the trees as from a carpet rise 
In knolls and clumps, in rich varieties. 
The knights are for a moment forced to rein 
Their horses in, which, feeling turf again, 
Thrill, and curvet, and long to be at large 
To scour the space, and give the winds a charge, 
Or pulling tight the bridles as they pass, 
Dip their warm mouths into the freshening grass : 
But soon in easy rank, from glade to glade, 
Proceed they, coasting underneath the shade ; 
Some bearing to the cool their placid brows, 
Some looking upward through the glimmering 
Or peering into spots that inwardly [boughs. 

Open green glooms, and I'.a'f-prepared to see 
The lady cross it, that, as stories tell. 
Ran loud and torn before a kniglit of hell. 
Various the trees and passing foliage here, — 
W^ild pear, and oak, and dusky juniper, 
With briony between in trails of white, 
And ivy, and the suckle's streaky light. 
And moss, warm gleaming with a sudden mark. 
Like growths of sunshine left upon the bark; 
And .still the pine, flat-topp'd, and dark, and tall, 
In lordly right predominant o'er all. 
Anon the sweet birds, like a sudden throng 
Of happy children, ring their tangled song 
From out the greener trees ; and then a cloud 
Of cawing rooks breaks o'er them, gathering loud 
Like savages at ships ; and then again 
Nothing is heard but their own stately train. 
Or ring-dove that repeats his pensive plea, 
Or startled gull up-screaming toward the sea. 



LEIGH HUNT. 



205 



THE NILE. 

It flows through old husliVl Eijypt and its sands, 

Like some grave niiglily tliought tlireading a 
dream, 

And times and things, as in that vision, seem 
Keeping along it their eternal stands, — 
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands 

That roam'd through the young world, the glory 
extreme 

Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam. 
The laughing queen that caught the world's great 
hands. 

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong, 

As of a world left emf)ty of its throng. 
And the void weighs on us ; and then we wake, 

And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along 
'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take 
Our own calm journey on for human sake. 



ABOU BEN ADHEM AND THE ANGEL. 

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) 
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, 
And saw, within the moonlight in his room. 
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, 
An angel, writing in a book of gold ; 
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold: 
And to the presence in the room he said, 
"What writest thou V The vision rais'd its head. 
And with a look made of all sweet accord, 
Answer'd,"The namesof those who love the Lord." 
"And is mine one1" said Abou. "Nay, not so," 
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low. 
But cheerly still ; and sai 1, " I pray thee, then, 
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." 

The angel wrote and vanish'd. The next night 
It came again, with a great wakening light, 
And show'd the names whom love of God had 

bless'd, 
And, lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. 



SPRING IN RAVENNA. 

TiiF. sun is up, and 'tis a morn of May 
Round old Ravenna's clear-shown towers and bay, 
A morn, the loveliest which the year has seen, 
Last of the spring, yet fresh with all its green; 
For a warm eve, and gentle rains at night, 
Have loft a sparkling welcome for the light, 
And there's a crystal clearness all about; 
The leaves are sharp, the distant hills look out; 
A balmy briskness comes upon the breeze; 
The smoke goes dancing f. orn the cottage trees; 
And when you listen, you may hear a coil, 
Of bubbling springs a'>oni the grassy soil: 
And all the scene, in short — sky, earth, and sea — 
Breathes like a bright-eyed face, that laughs out 
openly. 

'T is Nature, full of spirits, waked and springing: — 
The birds to the delicious time are singing, 



Darting with freaks and snatches up and down. 
Where the light woods go seaward from the town ; 
While happy foces, striking through the green 
Of leafy roads, at every turn are seen ; 
And the far ships, lifting their sails of white 
Like joyful hands, come up with scattery light, 
Come gleaming up, true to the wish'd-for day. 
And chase the whistling brine, and swirl into the 
bay. 



TO A CHILD, DURING SICKNESS. 

Sleep breathes at last from out thee, 

My little patient boy ; 
And balmy rest about thee 

Smooths oir the day's annoy. 
I sit me down, and think 

Of all thy winning ways ; 
Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink, 

That I had less to praise. 

Thy sidelong pillow'd meekness. 

Thy thanks to all that aid, 
Thy heart, in pain and weakness, 

Of fancied faults afraid ; 
The little trembling hand 

That wipes thy quiet tears, — 
The.se, these are things that may demand 

Dread memories for years. 

Sorrows I've had, severe ones 

I will not think of now; 
And calmly midst my dear ones, 

Have wasted with dry brow : 
But when thy fingers press. 

And pat my stooping head, 
I cannot bear the gentleness, — 

The tears are in their bed. 

Ah ! first-born of thy mother, 

When life and hope were new ; 
Kind playmate of thy brother. 

Thy sister, father, too : 
My light where'er I go, 

My bird when prison-bound, — 
My hand in hand companion, — no. 

My prayers shall hold thee round. 

To say, " He has departed," — 

"His voice, — his face, — is gone;" 
To feel impatient-hearted. 

Yet feel we must hear on : 
Ah, I could not endure 

To whisper of such wo. 
Unless I felt this sleep ensure 

That it will not be so. 

Yes, still he's fix'd and sleeping ! 

This silence too the while — 
Its very hush and creeping 

Seem whispering us a smile : — 
Something divine and dim 

Seems going iiy one's car, 
Like parting wings of cherul>im. 

Who sav, " We've finish'd here." 



BRYAN WALLER PROCTOR. 



!l 



Mr. Proctor, better known as Barry Corn- 
wall, was born in London, and educated at 
Harrow, where Byron was among his class- 
mates. On leaving school he entered the 
office of a solicitor at Calne, in Wiltshire : an 
uninteresting town, bat celebrated for having 
been at various periods the residence of 
Bowles, Crabbe, Coleridge, and Moore, 
with all of whom Proctor became intimately 
acquainted. At the end of four years, passed 
in the study of bis profession, he went to Lon- 
don, and was soon after called to the bar. 

Mr. Proctor's Dramatic Scenes — the work 
in which he first appeared as an author — were 
published in 1815. They were succeeded by 
A Sicilian Story, Marcian Colonna, The Flood 
of Thessaly, the tragedy of Mirandola, and 
several volumes of dramatic fragments, songs, 
and miscellaneous poems, which have toge- 
ther won him a very high position among con- 
temporary poets. Charles Lamb said of his 
Fragments, that there was not one of them, 
had he found them among the Garrick Plays 
in the British Museum, to which he would 
have refused a place in his Dramatic Speci- 
mens. His songs are among the best in the 
English language. They are full of tender- 
ness and enthusiasm ; and if not as carefully 
finished as they might be, they flow musically 
and naturally like the unstudied effusions of 
an improvisator. Proctor has written besides 
his poems several works in prose, among 
which are a Life of Edmund Kean, a Life 
of Ben .Tonson, and An Essay upon the Genius 
of Shakspeare. 

N. P. Willis, a warm admirer of the poet, 
has given in his Pencillings by the Way an 
interesting account of his visit to him in 1838. 
"With the address he had given me at part- 
ing," says Mr. Willis, " I drove to a large 
house in Bedford square; and, not accustomed 
to find the children of the muses waited on by 
servants in livery, 1 made up my mind, as I 
walked up the broad staircase, that I was 
blundering upon some Mr. Proctor of the 
exchange, whose respect for his poetical 
namesake, 1 hoped, would smooth my apology 
for the intrusionl Buried in a deep morocco 



chair, in a large library, notwithstanding, I 
found the poet himself — choice old pictures 
filling every nook between the book-shelves, 
tables covered with novels and annuals, rolls 
of prints, busts and drawings in all the cor- 
ners ; and, more important for the nonce, a 
table at the poet's elbow, set forth with as 
sensible a breakfast as the most unpoetical of 
men could desire." 

Mr, Proctor married a daughter of Basil 
Montagu, the best of Lord Bacon's editors, 
and a friend and patron of literary men. "The 
exquisite beauty of the Dramatic Scenes," our 
traveller informs us, " interested this lovely 
woman in his favour before she knew him, 
and far from worldly-wise as an attachment 
so grounded would seem, I never saw two 
people with a more habitual air of happiness. 
I thought of his touching song, 

'Ilnw many summers, love, 
Hiist Ihou heen mine'?' 

and looked at them with an irrepressible feel- 
ing of envy. A beautiful girl of eight or nine 
years, the 'golden-tressed Adelaide,' delicate, 
gentle, and pensive, as if she was born on the 
lip of Castaly, and knew she was a poet's 
child, completed the picture of happiness 

" I took my leave of this true poet after half 
a day passed in his company," continues Mr. 
Willis, "with the impression that he makes 
upon every one — of a man whose sincerity 
and kind-heartedness were the most promi- 
nent traits in his character. Simple in his 
language and feelings, a fond father, an afl'ec- 
tionate husband, a business-man of the closest 
habits of industry — one reads his strange ima- 
ginations, and high-wrought and even subli- 
mated poetry, and is in doubt at which most 
to wonder— the man as he is, or the poet as 
we know him in his books." 

An edition of Mr. Proctor's English 
Songs and other Short Poems was published 
in London by Moxon in the summer of 1844; 
and they have been reprinted in this countrj 
by Ticknor and Company of Boston. I be 
lieve no edition of his dramatic writings ha 
appeared in the United States. The selection 
in this volume are from the last English editior 



BRYAN W. PROCTOR. 



207 



THE RISING OF THE NORTH. 

Hark — to the sound! 
Without a trump, without a drum, 
The wild-eyed, hungry millions come, 

Along the echoing ground. 

From cellar and cave, from street and lane, 
Each from his separate place of pain, 

In a blackening stream, 
Come sick, and lame, and old, and poor. 
And all who can no more endure ; 

Like a demon's dream ! 

Starved children with their pauper sire, 
And labourers with their fronts of fire, 

In angry iium, 
And felons, hunted to their den, 
And all who shame the name of men. 

By millions come. 

The good, the bad, come hand in hand, 
Link'd by that law which none withstand ; 

And at their head 
Flaps no proud banner, flaunting high. 
But a shout — sent upwards to the sky, 

Oi^^ Bread. '—Bread!" 

That word their ensign — that the cause 
Which bids them burst the social laws, 

In wrath, in pain, 
That the sole boon for lives of toil 
Demand they from their natural soil : — 

Oh, not in vain ! 

One single year, and some who now 
Come forth, with oaths and haggard brow, 

Read prayer and psalm. 
In quiet homes : their sole desire 
Rude comforts near tiieir cottage fire, 

And Sabbath calm. 

But hunger is an evil foe : 

It striketh truth and virtue lov7. 

And pride elate : 
Wild hunger, stripp'd of hope and fear ! 
It doth not weigh ; it will not hear ; 

It cannot wait. 

For mark what comes : — To-night the poor 
(All mad) will burst the rich man's door. 

And wine will run 
In floods, and rafters blazing bright 
Will paint the sky with crimson light, 

Fierce as the sun ; 

And plate carved round with quaint device. 
And cups all gold will melt, like ice 

In Indian heat ! 
And queenly silks, from foreign lands. 
Will bear the stamps (if bloody hands 

And trampling feet: 

And murde) — from his hideous den 
Will come abroad and talk to men. 

Till creatures born 
For good (whose hearts kind pity nursed) 
Will act the direst crimes they cursed 

But yester-morn. 



So, wealth by want will be o'erthrown, 
And want be strong and guilty grown. 

Swollen out by blood. 
Sweet peace ! who sitt'sl aloft, sedate, - 
Who bind'st the little to the great. 
Canst thou not charm the serpent Hate 1 

And quell this feud 1 

Between the pomp of Croesus' state. 
And Irus, starved by sullen fate — 

'Tween "thee" and "me" — 
'Tween deadly frost and scorching sun — 
The thirty tyrants and the one — 

Some space must be. 

Must the world quail to absolute kings, 
Or tyrant mobs, those meaner things. 

All nursed in gore — 
Turk's bowstring — Tartar's vile ukase — 
Grim Marat's bloody band, who pace 

From shore to shore 1 

O God ! — since our bad world began, 
Thus hath it been — from man to man 

War, to the knife ! 
For bread — for gold — for words — for air ! 
Save us, O God ! and hear my prayer ! 
Save, save from shame — from crime — despair, 

Man's puny life ! 



STANZAS. 

That was not a barren time 

When the new world calmly lay 

Bare unto the frosty rime, 
Open to ihe burning day. 

Though her young limbs were not clad 
With the colours of the spring. 

Yet she was all iriward glad. 
Knowing all she bore within, 
Undeveloped, blossoming. 

There was beauty, such as feeds 
Poets in their secret hours ; 

Music mute; and all the seeds 
And the signs of all the flowers. 

There was wealth, beyond the gold 

Hid in oriental caves; 
There was — all we now behold 

'Tween our cradles and our graves. 

Judge not. then, the poet's dreams 
Barren all, and void of good : 

There are in tliem azAire gleams. 
Wisdom not all understood. 

Fables, with a heart of truth ; 

Mysteries, that unfold in light; 
Murals, beautiful for youth; 

Starry lessons for the night. 

Unto man, in peace and strife, 

True and false, and weak and strong. 

Unto nil. in death and life. 
Speaks the poet in his song. 



203 



BRYAN W. PROCTOR. 



THE RETURN OF THE ADMIRAL. 

How gallantly, how merrily, 

We ride along the sea ! 
The morning is all sunshine, 

The wind is blowing free : 
The billows are all sparkling, 

And bounding in the light, 
Like creatures in whose sunny veins 

The blood is running bright. 
All nature knows our triumph : 

Strange birds about us sweep ; 
Strange things come up to look at us, 

The masters of the deep : 
Li our wake, like any servant, 

Follows even the bold shark — 
Oh, proud must be our admiral 

Of such a bonny bark ! 

Proud, proud, must be our admiral, 

(Though he is pale to-day,) 
Of twice five hundred iron men, 

Who all his nod obey ; 
Who've fought for him, and conquer'd — 

Who've won, with sweat and gore, 
Nobility 1 which he shall have 

Whene'er he touch the shore. 
Oh ! would I were our admiral, 

To order, with a word — 
To lose a dozen drops of blood, 

And straight rise up a lord ! 
I 'd shout e'en to yon shark, there, 

Who follows in our lee, 
" Some day I '11 make thee carry me, 

Like lightning through the sea." 

— The admiral grew paler, 

And paler as we flew : 
Still talk'd he to his officers, 

And smiled u])on his crew ; 
And he look'd up at the heavens, 

And he look'd down on the sea. 
And at last he spied the creature. 

That kept following in our lee. 
He shook — 'twas but an instant — 

For speedily the pride 
Ran crimson to his heart. 

Till all chances he defied : 
It threw boldness on his forehead; 

Gave firmness to his breath ; 
And he stood like some grim warrior 

New risen up from death. 

That night, a horrid whisper 

Fell on us where we lay ; 
And we knew our old fine admiral 

Was chan'^ing into clay ; 
And we heard the wash of vyaters, 

Though nothing could we see, 
And a whistle ami a plunge 

Among the billows in our lee ! 
Till dawn we watch'd the body 

In its dnad and ghastly sleep, 
And next evenina: at sunset. 

It was slung into the deep! 



And never, from that moment — 

Save one shudder through the sea, 
Saw we (or heard) the shark 
That had follow'd in our lee ! 



FORBIDDEN LOVE. 

I LOVE thee ! Oh, the strife, the pain. 

The fiery thoughts that through me roll ! 
I love thee ! Look — again, again ! 

O stars ! that thou couldst read my soul : 
I would thy bright bright eye could pierce 

The crimson folds that hide my heart ; 
Then wouldst thou find the serpent fierce 

That stings me — and will not depart ! 

Look los'e upon me, with thine eyes ! 

Yet, no — men's evil tongues are nigh : 
Look pity, then, and with thy sighs 

Waste music on me — till I die ! 
Yet, love not I sigh not ! Turn (thou musf) 

Thy beauty from me, sweet and kind ; 
'Tis fit that I should burn to dust — 

To death : because — I am not blind ! 

I love thee — and I live ! The moon 

Who sees me from her calm above, 
^ The wind who weaves her dim soft tune 

About me, know how much I love ! 
Naught else, save niglit and the lonely hour, 

E'er heard my passion wild and strong ; 
Even thou yet deem'st not of thy power, 

Unless — thou readst aright my song I 



A REPOSE. 

She sleeps among her pillows soft, 

(A dove, now wearied with her flight,) 
And all around, and all aloft. 

Hang flutes and folds of virgin white : 
Her hair out-darkens the dark night. 

Her glance outshines the starry sky ; 
But now her locks are hidden quite. 

And closed is her fringed eye ! 

She sleepeth : wherefore doth she start ? 

She sigheth : doth she feel no pain 1 
None, none ! the dream is near her heart : 

The spirit of sleep is in her brain. 
He cometh down like golden rain, 

Without a wish, without a sound ; 
He cheers the sleeper (ne'er in vain) 
Like May, when earth is winter-bound. 

All day within some cave he lies, 

Dethroned from his nightly sway — 
Far fading when the dawning skies 

Our souls with wakening thoua;hts array. 
Two Spirits of might doth man ob>"y ; 

By each he's wrought, from each he lean 
The one is Lord of life by day ; 

The other when starry night returns. 



BRYAN W. PROCTOR. 



209 



A STORM. 

The spirits of the mighty sea, 

To-night are waken'd from their dreams, 
And upward to the tempest flee. 

Baring their foreheads where the gleams 
Of lightning run, and thunders cry, 
Rushing and raining through the sky ! 

The spirits of the sea are waging 
Loud war upon the peaceful night, 

And bands of the black winds are raging 
Through the tenijiest blue and bright; 

Blowing her cloudy hair to dust 

With kisses, like a madman's lust ! 

What ghost now, like an Ate, walketh 
Earth — ocean — air 1 and aye with time. 

Mingled, as with a lover talketh ? 
Methinks their colloquy sublime 

Draws anger from the sky, which raves 

Over the self-abandon'd waves ! 

Behold ! like millions mass'd in battle, 
The trembling billows headlong go. 

Lashing the barren deeps, which rattle 
In mighty transport till they grow 

All fruitful in their rocky home, 

And burst from phrensy into foam. 

And look ! where on the faithless billows 
Lie women, and men, and children fair; 

Some hanging, like sleep, to their sv^'ollen pillows, 
With helpless sinews and streaming hair. 

And some who plunge in the yawning graves ! 

Ah ! lives there no strength beyond the waves'! 

'Tis said, the moon can rock the sea 
From phrensy strange to silence mild — 

To sleep — to death : — But where is she. 
While now her storm-born giant child 

Upheaves his shoulder to the skies'? 

Arise, sweet planet pale — arise ! 

She Cometh — lovelier than the dawn 

In summer, when the leaves are green — 

More graceful than the alarmed fawn, 
Over his grassy supper seen : 

Bright quiet from her beauty falls, 

Until — again the tempest calls ! 

The supernatural storm — he waketh 
Again, and lo ! from sheets all white, 

Stands up unto the stars, and shaketh 
Scorn on the jewell'd locks of night. 

He carries a ship on his foaming crown, 

And a cry, like hell, as he rushes down ! 

And so still soars from calm to storm, 

The stature of the unresting sea: 
So doth desire or wrath deform 
Our else calm humanity — 
Until at last we sleep. 
And never wake nor weep, 
(Ilush'd to death by some faint tune,) 
In our grave beneath the moon ! 
27 



I DIE FOR THY SWEET LOVE. 

I DIE for thy sweet love ! The ground 
Not panteth so for summer rain, 

As I for one soft look of thine; 
And yet — I sigh in vain ! 

A hundred men are near thee now — 
Each one, perhaps, surpassing me : 

But who doth feel a thousandth part 
Of what I feel for thee 1 

They look on thee, as men will look 

Who round the wild world laugh and rove ! 

/only think how sweet 'twould be 
To die for thy sweet love ! 



A PETITION TO TIME. 

Touch us gently, Time ! 

Let us glide adown thy stream 
Gently — as we sometimes glide 

Through a quiet dream ! 
Humble voyagers are We, 
Husband, wife, and children three — 
(One is lost — an angel, fled 
To the azure overhead!) 

Touch us gently. Time ! 

We've not proud nor soaring wings ; 
Ou7- ambition, our content, 

Lies in simple things. 
Humble voyagers are We, 
O'er life's dim unsounded sea. 
Seeking only some calm clime ; — 
Touch us gen f 1 1/, gentle Time! 



A CHAMBER SCENE. 

Trf.vt) softly through these amorous rooms; 
For every bough is hung with life, 
And kisses in harmonious strife. 

Unloose their sharp and wing'd perfumes ! 

From Afric, and the Persian looms, 
The carpel's silken leaves have sprung, 
And heaven, in its blue bounty, flung 

These starry flowers, and azure blooms. 

Tread softly ! By a creature fair 

The deity of love reposes, 

His red lips open, like the roses 
Which round his hyacinthine hair 

Hang in crimson coronals ; 

And passion fills the arched halls; 
And beauty floats upon the air. 

Tread softly — softly, like the foot 

Of Winter, shod with fleecy snow, 
Who Cometh white, and cold, and mute. 

Lest he should wake the Spring below. 
Oh, look ! for here lie Love and Youth, 

Fair spirits of the heart and mind : 
Alas ! that one should stray from truth ; 

And one — be ever, ever blind ! 
s 3 



210 



BRYAN W. PROCTOR. 



THE LAKE HAS BURST, 

The lake has burst ! The lake has burst ! 
Down through the chasms the wild waves flee , 

They gallop along 

With a roaring song, 
Away to the eager awaiting sea ! 

Down through the valleys, and over the rocks, 
And over the forests the flood runs free ; 

And wherever it dashes. 

The oaks and the ashes 
Shrink, drop, and are borne to the hungry sea ! 

The cottage of reeds and the tower of stone, 
Both shaken to ruin, at last agree ; 

And the slave and his master 

In one wide disaster 
Are hurried like weeds to the scornful sea ! 

The ssa-beast he tosseth his foaming mane ; 
He bellows aloud to the misty sky. 

And the sleep-buried thunder 

Awakens in wonder. 
And the lightning opens her piercing eye ! 

There is death above, there is death around, 
There is death wheresoever the waters be, 

There is nothing now doing 

But terror and ruin, 
On earth, and in air, and the stormy sea I 



THE WEAVER'S SONG. 

Weave, brothers, weave! — Swiftly throw 

The shuttle athwart the loom, 
And show us how brightly your flowers grow, 

That have beauty but no perfume ! 
Come, show us the rose, with a hundred dyes, 

The lily, that hath no spot ; 
The violet, deep as your true love's eyes, 
And the little forget-me-not. 

Sing — sing, brothers ! weave and sing ! 
'Tis good both to sing and to weave ! 
'Tis better to work than live idle; 
'T is better to sing than grieve. 

Weave, brothers, weave ! — Weave, and bid 

The colours of sunset glow ! 
Let grace in each gliding thread be hid ! 

Let beauty about ye blow ! 
Let your skein be long, and your silk be fine, 

And your hands both firm and sure. 
And time nor chance shall your work untwine; 

But all — like a truth — endure. 
So — sing, brothers, &c. 

Weave, brothers, weave ! — Toil is ours ; 

But toil is the lot of men ; 
One gathers the fruit, one gathers the flowers, 

One soweth the seed again ! 
There is not a creature, from England's king, 

To the peasant that delves the soil. 
That knows half the pleasures the seasons bring, 

If he have not his share of toil ! 
So, — sing, brothers, &c. 



A PRAYER IN SICKNESS. 

Send down thy winged angel, God ! 

Amid this night so wild ; 
And bid him come where now we watch, 

And breathe upon our child ! 

She lies upon her pillow, pale, 

And moans within her sleep. 
Or wakeneth with a patient smile, 

And striveth not to weep. 

How gentle and how good a child 

She is, we know too well. 
And dearer to her parents' hearts, 

Than our weak words can tell. 

We love — we watch throughout the night, 

To aid, when need may be ; 
We hope — and have despair'd, at times ; 

But now we turn to Thee ! 

Send down thy sweet-soul'd angel, God ! 

Amid the darkness wild, 
And bid him soothe our souls to-night, 

And heal our gentle child ! 



THE STORMY PETREL. 

A THOUSAND miles from land are we. 

Tossing about on the roaring sea ; 

From billow to bounding billow cast. 

Like fleecy snow on the stormy blast ; 

The sails are scatter'd abroad, like weeds, 

The strong masts shake like quivering reeds, 

The mighty cables, and iron chains. 

The hull, which all earthly strength disdains. 

They strain and they crack, and hearts like stone 

Their natural hard proud strength disown. 

Up and down ! Up and down ! 

From the base of the wave to the billow's crown, 

And amid the flashing and feathery foam 

The stormy Petrel finds a home — 

A home, if such a place may be. 

For her who lives on the wide wide sea, 

On the craggy ice, in the frozen air, 

And only seeketh her rocky lair 

To warm her young, and to teach them spring 

At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing ! 

O'er the deep ! O'er the deep ! [fish slei 

Where the whale, and the shark, and the swo 
Outflying the blast and the driving rain, 
The Petrel telteth her tale — in vain ; 
For the mariner curseth the warning bird 
Who bringeth him news of the storms unhear 
Ah ! thus docs the prophet, of good or ill, 
Meet hate from the creatures he serveth still ; 
Yet he ne'er falters :— So, Petrel ! spring 
Once more o'er the waves on thy stormy wir 



BRYAN W. PROCTOR. 



211 



THE SEA. 

The sea ! the sea ! the open sea ! 

The blue, the fresh, the ever free ! 

Without a mark, without a bound, 

It runneth the earth's wide region's round ; 

It plays with the clouds ; it mocks the skies ; 

Or like a cradled creature lies. 

I 'm on the sea ! I 'm on the sea ! 

I am where I would ever be, 

With the blue above, and the blue below, 

And silence wheresoe'er I go ; 

If a storin should come, and awake the deep, 

What matter ] I shall ride and sleep. 

I love, oh ! how I love to ride 
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide, 
When every mad wave drowns the moon, 
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune. 
And tells how goeth the world below, 
And why the sou'west blasts do blow. 

I never was on the dull tame shore. 
But I loved the great sea more and more, 
And backward iiew to her billowy breast. 
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest ; 
And a mother she was and is to me, 
For I was born on the open sea ! 

The waves were white, and red the morn. 
In the noisy hour when I was born ; 
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise roll'd, 
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold ; 
And never was heard such an outcry wild 
As welcomed to life the ocean child ! 

I've lived since then, in calm and strife, 
Full fifty summers a sailor's life, 
With wealth to spend and a power to range. 
But never have sought, nor sigh'd for change ; 
And death, whenever he comes to me. 
Shall come on the wild unbounded sea ! 



SOFTLY WOO AWAY HER BREATH. 

Softly woo away her breath, 

Gentle Death ! 
Let her leave thee with no strife. 

Tender mournful, murmuring Life ! 
She hath seen her happy day ; 

She hath had her bud and blossorn ; 
Now she pales and shrinks away. 

Earth, into thy gentle bosom. 

She hath done her bidding here, 

Angels dear ! 
Bear her perfect soul above, 

Serapii of the skies — sweet Love ! 
Good she was, and fair in youth. 

And her mind was seen to soar, 
And her heart was wed to truth; 

Take her, then, for evermore — 

For ever — evermore ! 



A DEEP AND A MIGHTY SHADOW. 

A DUF.p and a mighty shadow 

Across my heart is thrown. 
Like a cloud on a summer meadow 

Where the thunder-wind hath blown ! 
The wild-rose. Fancy, dieth, 
The sweet bird. Memory, flieth. 

And leaveth me alone — 

Alone with my hopeless sorrow: 

No other mate I know ! 
I strive to awake to-morrow ; 

But the dull words will not flow ! 
I pray — but my prayers are driven 
Aside, by the angry heaven, 

And weigh me down with wo ! 

I call on the past, to lend me 

Its songs, to soothe niy pain : 
I bid the dim future send me 

A light from its eyes — in vain ! 
Naught comes ; but a shrill cry starteth 
From Hope, as she fast departcth : — 

" I go, and come not again !" 



THE QUADROON. 

Say they that all beauty lies 

In the paler maiden's hue ? 
Say they that all softness flies. 

Save from the eyes of April blue 1 
Arise thou, like a night in June, 
Beautiful Quadroon ! 

Come — all dark and bright, as skies 
With the tender starlight hung ! 

Loose the love from out thine eyes ! 
Loose the angel from thy tongue ! 

Let them hear heaven's own sweet tune, 
Beautiful Quadroon ! 

Tell them — Beauty (born above) 
From no shade nor hue doth fly ; 

All she asks is mind, is love. 

And both upon thine aspect lie — 

Like the light upon the moon. 

Beautiful Quadroon ! 



AN EPITAPH. 

He died, and left the world behind ! 

His once wild heart is cold ! 
His once keen eye is quell'd and blind! 

What more 1 — His tale is told. 

He came, and, baring his heaven-bright thought, 

He earn'd the base world's ban : 
And — having vainly lived and taught, 

Gave place to a meaner i^an ! 



212 



BRYAN W. PROCTOR. 



TO THE SOUTH WIND. 

O swF.F.T South Wind I 
Long hast thou Hnger'd midst those islands fair, 
Which he, enchanted, on tho Indian deep, 
Like sea-maids all asleep, 
Cliarm'd hy the cloudless sun and azure air! 
O sweetest southern wind ! 
Pause here awhile, and gently now uuhind 
Thy dark rose-crowned hair ! 

Wilt thou not unloose now, 

In this, the bluest of all hours, 

Thy passion-colour'd flowers ? 

Rest ; and let fall the fragrance from thy brow 

On Beauty's parted lips and closed eyes, 

And on her cheeks, which crimson-liked the skies; 

And sluniher on her bosom, white as snow. 

Whilst starry midnight flies ! 

We, whom the northern blast 

Blows on, from night till morn, from morn to eve, 

Hearing thee, sometimes grieve 

That our poor summer's day not long may last: 

And yet, perhaps, 'twere well 

We should not ever dwell 

With thee, sweet spirit of the sunny south ; 

But touch thy odorous mouth 

Once, and be gone unto our blasts again. 

And their bleak welcome, and our wintry snow; 

And arm us (by enduring) for that pain 

Which the bad world sends forth, and all its wo ! 



MUSIC. 



I SEE small ditTerence 
'Twixt one sound and its next. All seem akin 
And run on the same feet, ever. 

Peace ! Thou want'st 
One heavenly sense, and speak'st in ignorance. 
Seest thou no ditTering shadows which divide 
The rose and poppy 1 "Tis the same with sounds. 
There's not a minute in the round of time [space 
But's hinged with different music. In that small 
Between the thought and its swift utterance — 
Ere silence buds to sound — the angels, listening, 
Hear infinite varieties of song ! 
And they who turn the lightning-rapid spheres 
Have flown an evening's journey. 



FLOWERS. 

We have left behind us 
The riches of the meadows, and now come 
To visit the virgin primrose where she dwells. 
Midst harebells and the wild-wood hyacinths. 
'Tis there she keeps her court. Dost see yon bank 
The sun is kissing ! Near — go near ! for there, 
('Neath those broad leaves, amidst yon straggling 
Immaculate odours from the violet [grasses,) 

Spring up for ever: Like sweet thoughts that come 
Wing'd from the maiden fancy, and fly off 
In music to the skies, and there are lost, 
These ever-steaming odours seek the sun 
And fade in the light he scatters. 



REMEMBERED LOVE. 

On power of love! so fearful and so fair — 
Life of our life on earth, yet kin to care — 
Oh ! thou day-dreaming spirit who dost look 
Upon the future as the charmed book 
Of Fate were o])en'd to thine eyes alone — 
Thou who dost cull, from moments stolen and gone 
Into eternity, memorial things. 
To deck the days to come — thy revelings 
Were glorious and beyond all others. Thou 
Didst banquet upon beauty once ; and now 
The ambrosial feast is ended ! Let it be 
Enough to say " It ivas." Oh ! upon me, 
From thy o'ershadowing wings ethereal. 
Shake odorous airs, so may my senses all 
Be spell-bound to thy service, beautiful power, 
And on the breath of every coming hour 
Send me faint tidings of the things that were. 



KINGS. 



Methinks 
There's something lonely in the state of kings ! 
None dare come near them. As the eagle, poised 
Upon his sightless throne in upper air. 
Scares gentle birds away, so kings (cut off 
From human kindred by the curse of power) 
Are shunn'd and live alone. Who dare come near 
The region of a king 1 There is a wall 
(Invisible, indeed, yet strong and high) 
Which fences kings from close approach of men. 
They live respected — oh, that chest "respect!" 
As if the homage that abases others 
Could comfort him that has't. Alone — alone ! 
Prison'd in ermine and a velvet chair — 
Shut out from hojie, (the height being all attain'd,) 
Yet touch'd hy terrors — what can soothe a king ! 



NIGHT THOUGHTS. 

'Tis night — still night ! The murmuring world 
lies still ! 
All things which are lie still and whisper not; 
The owl, the bat, the clock which strikes the hour 
And summons forgetful man to think of heaven. 
The midnight cricket On the ashy hearth, 
Are quiet, dumb! Hope, Fear, lie drown'd in dreams; 
And conscience, calmer than a baby's breath, 
Murders the heart no more. Who goes? 'Tis naught, 
Save the bird echo, who comes back to me 
Afraid o' the silence. Love! art thou asleep 1 
Rose o' the night, on whom the soft dew lies, 
Here come I, sweet, mocking the nightingale, 
To sing of endless love, passionate pain. 
And wishes that know no rest ! 



HAPPINESS. 

A MONTH ago I was happy ! No, 
Not happy, yet encircled by deep joy. 
Which, though 'twas all around, I could not tout 
But it was ever thus with Happiness: 
It is the gay to-morrow of the mind 
That never comes. 



BRYATV W. PROCTOR. 



213 



TO THE SINGER PASTA. 

Nevkh till now — never till now, O Queen 

And wonder of the enchanted world of sound ! 

Never till now was such bright creature seen, 
Startling to transport all the regions round I 

Whence comest thou — with those eyes and that 
fine mien. 
Thou sweet, sweet singer 1 Like an angel found 

Mourning alone, thou seem'st (thy mates all fled) 

A star 'mong clouds — a spirit mid the dead. 

Melodious thoughts hang round thee ! Sorrow 

sings 
Perpetual sweetness near — divine despair ! 
Thou speak'st — and music, with her thousand 
strings, 
Gives golden answers from the haunted air ! 
Thou mos'est — and round thee grace her beauty 
flings! 
Thou look'st — and love is born! O songstress rare! 
Lives there on earth a power like that which lies 
In those resistless tones — in those dark eyes 1 

Oh, I have lived — how long ! — with one deep 
treasure. 

One fountain of delight unlock'd, unknown ; 
But th/)u, the prophetess of my new pleasure. 

Hast come at last, and struck my heart of stone ; 
And now outgushcs, without stint or measure, 

The endless rapture — and in places lone 
I shout it to the stars and winds that flee, 
And then I think on all I owe to thee ! 

I see thee at all hours — beneath all skies — 

In every shape thou takest, or passionate path : 

Now art thou like some wing'd thing that cries 
Over a city flaming fast to death ; 

Now, in thy voice, the mad Medea dies: 

Now Desdemona yields her gentle breath : — 

All things thou art by turns — from wrath to love; 

From the queen eagle to the vestal dove ! 

Horror is stern and strong, and death (unmask'd 
In slow pale silence, or mid brief eclipse) ; 

But what are they to fhy sweet strength, when task'd 
To its height — with all the God upon thy lipsl 

Not even the cloudless days and riches, asked 
By one who in the book of darkness dips. 

Vies with that radiant wealth which they inherit 

Who ov;n, like thee, the Muse's deathless spirit. 

Would I could crown thee as a king can crown I 
Yet, what are kingly gifts to thy fair fame. 

Whose echoes shall all vulgar trium[>hs drown — 
Whose light shall darken every meaner name 1 

The gallant courts thee for his own renown ; 
Mimicking thee, he plays love's pleasant game : 

The critic brings thee praise, which all rehearse ; 

And I — alas ! — I can but bring my verse ! 



ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN. 

Oh thou vast Ocean ! ever sounding sea ! 
Thou symbol of a dread immensity ! 
Thou thing that windcst round the solid world 
Like a huge animal, which downward hurl'd 
From the black clouds, lies weltering and alone, 
Lashing and writhing till its strength be gone. 
Thy voice is like the thunder, and thy sleep 
Is as a giant's slumber, loud and deep. 
Thou speakest in the east and in the west 
At once, and on thy heavily laden breast 
Fleets come and go, and shapes that have no life 
Or motion yet are moved and meet in strife. 
The earth hath naught of this: no chance or 

change 
Ruflles its surface, and no spirits dare 
Give answer to the tempest-waken air; 
But o'er its wastes the weakly tenants range 
At will, and wound its bosom as they go : 
Ever the same, it hath no ebb, no flow ; 
But to their stated rounds the seasons come. 
And pass like visions to their viewless home, 
And come again, and vanish : the young spring 
Looks ever bright with leaves and blossoming, 
And winter always winds his sullen horn. 
When the wild autumn with a look forlorn 
Dies in his stormy manhood ; and the skies 
Weep, and flowers sicken when the summer 

flies. 
— Thou only, terrible Ocean, hast a power, 
A will, a voice, and in thy wrathful hour. 
When thou dost lift thine anger to the clouds, 
A fearful and magnificent beauty shrouds 
Thy broad green forehead. If thy waves be driven 
Backwards and forwards by the shifting wind, 
How quickly dost thou thy great strength unbind, 
And stretch thine arms, and war at once with 

heaven. 

Thou trackless and immeasurable main ! 
On thee no record ever lived again 
To meet the hand that writ it : line nor lead 
Hath ever fathom'd thy profoundest deeps. 
Where haply the huge monster swells and 

sleeps, 
King of his watery limit, who, 'tis said. 
Can move the miijhty ocean into storm — 
Oh ! wonderful thou art, great element : 
And fearful in thy spleeny humours lient, 
And lovely in repose : thy summer form 
Is beautiful, and when thy silver waves 
Make music in earth's dark and winding caves, 
I love to wander on thy pebbled beach. 
Marking the sunlight at the evening hour. 
And hearken to the thoughts thy waters teach — 
" Eternity, eternity, and power." 



HENRY KIRKE WHITE. 



Few writers of verses have been more over- 
rated than Henry Kirke White, and it is a 
shame, that while there has never appeared in 
this country a single edition of the poetical 
writings of Landor, Kenvon, Milnes, Miss 
Barrett, and others of similar merit, there 
have been more impressions of White than 
there have been of Milton, or Pope, or Cole- 
ridge. 

Henry Kirke White was born in Notting- 
ham, on the twenty-first of March, 1785. He 
was deemed a dull boy at school, where at the 
early age of eleven he began to write verses 
to satirize his teacher, for supposed injuries. 
He was in his fifteenth year articled to an 
attorney, in his native town, and while in 
his office acquired by diligent application a 
knowledge of the Greek, Spanish, Portu- 
guese and Italian languages. An unfortunate 
deafness induced him to abandon the study of 
the law, and he published a small volume of 
poems with the expectation that the profits 
would enable him to enter one of the univer- 



sities. In this he was disappointed; but 
several gentlemen stepped forward and became 
his patrons, and he entered St. John's College, 
at Cambridge, where he soon obtained a high 
reputation among his classmates for scholar- 
ship and for his personal virtues. His health 
was quickly impaired by his constant and 
earnest devotion to study, and he died on the 
nineteenth of October, 180G, in the twenty- 
first year of his age. 

His poetical writings were collected soon 
after his death, and published with an ele- 
gant memoir by Ur. Southey. The admira- 
tion which they excited is said to have been 
almost unexampled. But a more correct esti- 
mate of his abilties now obtains. He was 
scarcely equal to the Davidsons of New York, 
and it would be almost as absurd to compare 
him with Keats or Chatterton as to com- 
pare Robert Montgomery with Milton. I 
doubt whether if he had lived to the maturest 
age, he would have produced any thing in 
poetry above elegant mediocrity. 



THE SAVOYARD'S RETURN. 

Oh ! yonder is the well-known spot, 

My dear, my long-lost native home ! 
Oh ! welcome is yon little cot, 

Where I shall rest, no more to roam ! 
Oh ! I have travell'd far and wide, 

O'er many a distant foreign land ; 
Each place, each province I have tried, 

And sung and danced my saraband : 
But all their charms could not prevail 
To steal my heart from yonder vale. 

Of distant climes the false report 

Allured me from my native land ; 
It bade me rove — my sole support 

My cymbals and my saraband. 
The woody dell, the hanging rock. 

The chamois skipping o'er the heights ; 
The plain adorn'd with many a flock. 

And, oh ! a thousand more delights, 
That graced yon dear beloved retreat, 
Have backward won my weary feet. 

Now safe return'd, with wandering tired, 
No more my little home I'll leave ; 

And many a tale of what I 've seen 
Shall while away the winter's eve. 



Oh ! I have wander'd far and wide. 
O'er many a distant foreign land ; 
Each place, each province I have tried, 
And sung and danced my saraband ; 
But all their charms coukl not prevail, 
To steal my heart from yonder vale. 



CANZONET. 

Maidt.v ! wrap thy mantle round thee, 

Cold the rain beats on thy breast : 
Why should horror's voice astound thee, 
Death can bid the wretched rest ! 
All under the tree 
Thy bed may be. 
And thou mayst slumber peacefully. 

Maiden ! once gay Pleasure knew thee ; 

Now thy cheeks are pale and deep : 
Love has been a felon to thee. 
Yet, poor maiden, do not weep: 
There 's rest for thee 
All under the tree, 
Where thou wilt sleep most peacefully. 

214 



574 



HENRY KIRKE WHITE. 



215 



I AM PLEASED, AND YET I'M SAD.' 

When twilight steals along the ground, 
And all the bells are ringing round, 

One, two, three, four, and live, 
I at my study window sit. 
And, rapt in many a musing fit. 

To bliss am all alive. 

But though impressions calm and sweet 
Thrill round my heart a holy heat, 

And I am inly glad. 
The tear-drop stands in either eye, 
And yet I cannot tell thee why, 

I am pleased, and yet I 'm sad. 

The silvery rack that flies away 
Like mortal life or pleasure's ray, 

Does that disturb my breast ? 
Nay, what have I, a studious man. 
To do with life's unstable plain, 

Or pleasure's fading vest ? 

Is it that here I must not stop. 
But o'er yon blue hill's woody top, 

Must bend my lonely way I 
No, surely no ! for give but me 
My own fire-side, and I shall be 

At home where'er I stray. 

Then is it that yon steeple there, 
With music sweet shall fill the air, 

When thou no more canst hear ? 
Oh, no ! oh, no ! for then forgiven 
I shall be with my God in heaven. 

Released from every fear. 

Then whence it is I cannot tell, 
But there is some mysterious spell 

That holds me when I 'm glad ; 
And so the tear-drop fills my eye. 
When yet in truth I know not why. 

Or wherefore, I am sad. 



TO CONSUMPTION. 

Gkvtlt, most gently, on thy victim's head. 
Consumption, lay thine hand ! — let me decay, 
Like the expiring lamp, unseen, away, 

And softly go to slumber with the dead. 

And if 'tis true, what holy men have said. 
That strains angelic oft foretell the day 
Of death to those good men who fall thy prey, 

O let the aerial music round my bed, 

Diss(jlving sad in dying symphony. 

Whisper the solemn warning in mine ear ! 

That I may bid my weeping friends good-by 
Ere I depart upon my journey drear: 

And, smiling faintly on the painful past, 

Compose my decent head, and breathe my last. 



28 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. 

When marshall'd on the nightly plain. 
The glittering host bestud the sky ; 

One star alone, of all the train. 

Can fix the sinner's wandering eye. 

Hark ! hark ! to God the chorus breaks, 
From every host, from every gem : 

But one alone the Saviour speaks, 
It is the Star of Bethlehem. 

Once on the raging seas I rode. 

The storm was loud — the night was dark, 
The ocean yawn'd — and rudely blow'd 

The wind that tos.s'd my foundering bark. 

Deep horror then my vitals froze. 

Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem ; 

When suddenly a star arose, — 
It was the Star of Bethlehem. 

It was my guide, my light, my all, 
It bade my dark forebodings cease ; 

And through the storm and dangers' thrall, 
It led me to the port of peace. 

Now safely moor'd — my perils o'er, 
I 'II sing, first in night's diadem. 

For ever and for evermore 

The Star ! — The Star of Bethlehem ! 



TO AN EARLY PRIMROSE. 

Mild offspring of a dark and sullen sire! 
Whose mixlest form, so delicately fine. 

Was nursed in whirling storms, 

And cradled in the winds ; 

Thee, when young spring first question'd winter's 

sway. 
And da, ed the sturdy blusterer to the fight, 

Thee on this bank he threw 

To mark his victory. 

In this low vale, the promise of the year, 
Serene thou openest to the nipping gale, 

Unnoticed and alone. 

Thy tender elegance. 

So virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storms 
Of chill adversity : in some lone walk 

Of life she rears her head, 

Obscure and unobserved. 

While every bleaching breeze that on her blows 
Chastens her spotless j)urity of breast. 

And hardens her to bear 

Serene the ills of life. 



LORD BYRON. 



George Gordon Byron was born in lion- 
don on the twenty-second of January, 1788. 
His father, who was a man of dissolute habits, 
quitted England in the following year, and 
soon afterward his mother retired to Aberdeen, 
where at an early age he was placed at a 
grammar school, in which he remained until 
the death of his great uncle, the sixth Lord 
Byron, when (his father having previously 
died in France) he succeeded to the family 
title and estates, and removed to Newstead 
Abbey. Soon after this he was placed under 
the guardianship of the Earl of Carlisle, by 
whom he was sent to Harrow, where he re- 
mained about four years. He is described by 
Dr. Drury, the head master here, as having 
been sensitive and diffident, and not easily go- 
verned except by gentle means. He did not 
excel in scholarship, but none of his school fel- 
lows, among whom were the present Sir Robert 
Peel, Mr. Proctor, and others who have since 
been distinguished, were equal to him in gene- 
ral information. In his seventeenth year he 
was transferred to Trinity College, Cambridge. 
His general characteristics were still the same 
as at Harrow. He cared nothing for the ho- 
nours of the university, and its discipline was 
not of a nature rightly to influence his conduct. 

On leaving Cambridge Byron resumed his 
residence at Newstead Abbey, a place rich in 
legendary associations, and situated in one of 
the most romantic districts of the country. He 
now published The Hours of Idleness, a col- 
lection of verses written during his college 
life, and remembered at this day chiefly on 
account of the severe criticism they received 
in the Edinburgh Review,* which lashed the 
dormant energies of the poet into action, and 
led to the composition of English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers, a satire in which he took 
ample vengeance not only upon his critics but 
upon nearly all the literary men of the day 
who were more fortunate than himself. 

A circumstance occurred about this time 
which had a powerful influence upon Byron's 
future character. Mary Chaworth was pro- 

*Thi!! rflebraled article was written by Lnrii Brougiiam. 
216 



bably the only Englishwoman whom he ever 
loved. He had become acquainted with her 
soon after his removal from Scotland, and had 
never wholly abandoned the hope that his 
affection would be returned, until now, when 
he underwent the trial of seeing her married to 
another. She is the heroine of The Dream, 
and is alluded to in many of his sweetest 
verses, written in subsequent years. 

Immediately after the publication of Eng- 
lish Bards and Scotch Reviewers, the noble 
author took his seat the first time in the 
House of Lords. He entered upon public life 
under peculiar and adverse circumstances. He 
was unknown in society, and there was no 
peer to present him in parliament. The lone- 
liness of his position destroyed an incipient 
ambition of political eminence, and deepened 
the gloom and misanthropy which had been 
caused by earlier disappointments. He sud- 
denly determined to travel, and leaving Lon- 
don with Mr. John Cam Hobhouse, in July, 
1809, he passed two years in Portugal, Spain, 
Greece, Turkey and Asia Minor. Approach- 
ing England in the summer of 1811, he wrote 
to a friend, " Embarrassed in my private, and 
indifferent to public affairs ; solitary, without 
the wish to be social ; with a body enfeebled 
by a succession of fevers, but a spirit and 
heart yet unbroken, I am returning home, with- 
out a hope, and almost without a desire." Be- 
fore he reached Newstead his melancholy was 
increased by intelligence of the death of his 
mother, and within a few weeks he lost five 
more of his nearest friends and relations. 

This depression gradually wore away. He 
employed himself in revising the poems he 
had written while abroad, and in March, 1812, 
when the author was but twenty-four years 
of age, England was electrified by the appear- 
ance of the first two cantos of Childe Harold. 
Alluding to the applause bestowed upon this 
work, he says tersely in his diary, "I awoke 
one morning and found myself famous." He 
became at once the idol of society. A few 
days before, he had made his first speech j 
in parliament. It was praised by Sheridan, 



LORD BYRON. 



217 



and other eminent men, and its success might 
have incited him to seek political distinction, 
but for his far greater success as a poet, which 
immediately determined his subsequent career. 
Childe Harold was followed by The Giaour, 
The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Lara, and 
The Siege of Corinth, in quick succession, 
and each added to his gigantic reputation. 

In January, 1815, Lord Byron was married 
to a daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke. The 
union, it is well known, was not productive 
of happiness, and in the following year, after 
Lady Byron had given birth to a daughter,* a 
separation took place. The public, with its cus- 
tomary impertinence, interfered, and it chose to 
side with the lady. Lord Byron was libelled, 
persecuted, and driven from society. No man 
was ever more grievously wronged. As Mr. 
Macaulay well observes, first came the ex- 
ecution, then the investigation, and, last of all, 
the accusation. There was a quarrel, but there 
has never been any thing proved, or even alleged, 
to show that Byron was more to blame than any 
other man who is on bad terms with his wife. 
He again quitted England for the continent, 
and with a determination never to return. Re- 
suming his pen, he produced in the three suc- 
ceeding years The Prisoner of Chillon, Man- 
fred, The Lament of Tasso, Beppo, the last 
cantos of Childe Harold, and many shorter 
poems, which were received with almost uni- 
versal applause. 

He fixed his home in Venice, and there 
abandoned himself to every kind of pleasure. 
Under the influence of excesses his health de- 
cayed, and his hair turned gray. His mind, 
too, suffered sensible injury. Don Juan and 
some of his dramatic pieces contain many 
passages which only Byron could have writ- 
ten, but his verse lost the energy for which it 
had been distinguished, and with his remark- 
able command of language passed away much 
of that delicate perception of the beautiful, 
which more than any thing else constitutes 
the poetical faculty. 

Among Byron's companions in Italy were 
Shelley and Leigh Hunt, associated with 
whom he established a periodical paper called 
The Liberal; but after the publication of a 
few numbers, the plan was relinquished. The 
dead body of his friend Shelley he assisted 
in burning by the bay of Spezia; Hunt, with 
whom he had quarrelled, returned to England, 

,* Ada Bvbon, now Countess of Lovelace. 
28 



and he directed his own eyes toward Greece, 
in contemplation of the last and noblest effort 
of his life. Sated with literary fame, weary 
of inaction, and thirsting for honourable dis- 
tinction in a new field, he entered the Grecian 
camp, where his reception was like that of 
Lafayette in America, though more enthusias- 
tic, more triumphant. Had he lived, he might 
have become eminent as a soldier and states- 
man; but anxiety, action and exposure in- 
duced disease, and on the nineteenth of March, 
1824, seven months after his arrival in Cepha- 
lonia, he died at Missolonghi, in the thirty- 
seventh year of his age. 

The admirable criticisms of Macaulay and 
other late writers have placed Byron in a 
more just position than could have been an- 
ticipated from the vague and partisan views 
that so long obtained respecting him. The 
world is fast learning to discriminate between 
his genius and character. The fervour of his 
poetry no longer blinds men to the fallacy of 
his moral code, nor is his life judged as for- 
merly with heartless and intolerant severity. 
He had very many noble qualities ; he was 
alive to tender and generous feelings, and per- 
formed numerous acts of disinterested libe- 
rality. His amours are the subject of the most 
melancholy chapter in his life, but they were 
less numerous and less dishonourable than 
has been supposed. His Uaisnn with Madame 
Guicciola, though by the standard of morality 
established on the shores of the Adriatic it 
might be called virtuous, was criminal; yet it is 
not to be visited with the censure which such a 
connection would deserve in England. In By- 
ron's early history, his unhappy education, his 
severe trials, and the capricious treatment he 
received from society, there is much to explain 
and to palliate his conduct. He knew the ivorld, 
and his judgment of it was not very erroneous. 
He was indeed what almost any man of genius, 
exposed to such vicissitudes, mightbe expected 
to be, unless guided and restrained by religious 
principle. His writings present a variety of 
states of mind and conditions of feeling, and 
critics have pointed out in them what is respect- 
ively the offspring of blind passion and genuine 
sentiment. The descriptive portions of Childe 
Harold, the versification of the Corsair, and the 
pure melancholy of some of his occasional 
effusions, will always be warmly admired by 
many who can never sympathize with the 
misanthropic overflowings of a sceptical mind. 
T 



218 



LORD BYRON. 



THE LAMENT OF TASSO.* 

Long years ! — it tries the thrilling frame to bear 

And eagle-spirit of a Child of Song — 

Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong ; 

Imputed madness, prison'd solitude, 

And the mind's canker in its savage mood, 

When the impatient thirst of light and air 

Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate, 

Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade, 

Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain 

With a hot sense of heaviness and pain ; 

And bare, at once, Captivity dispiay'd 

Stands scoffing through the never-open'd gate, 

Which nothing through its bars admits, save day 

And tasteless food, which I have eat alone 

Till its unsocial bitterness is gone ; 

And I can banquet like a beast of prey, 

Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave 

Which is my lair, and — it may be — my grave. 

All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear, 

But must be borne. I stoop not to despair; 

For I have battled with mine agony. 

And made me wings wherewith to overfly 

The narrow circus of my dungeon wall. 

And freed the Holy Sepulchre from thrall ; 

And revell'd among men and things divine, 

And pour'd my spirit over Palestine, 

In honour of the sacred war for him, 

The God who was on earth and is in heaven. 

For he hath strengthen'd me in he.irt and limb. 

That through this sufl'erance I might be forgiven, 

I have employed my penance to record 

How Salem's shrine was won, and how adored. 

But this is o'er — my pleasant task is done: — 

My long-sustaining friend of many years ! 

If I do blot thy final page with tears, 

Know, that my sorrows have wrung from me none. 

But thou, my young creation ! my soul's child ! 

Which ever playing i-ound me came and smiled. 

And woo'd me from myself with thy sweet sight, 

Thou too art gone — and so is my delight : 

And therefore do I weep and inly bleed 

With this last bruise upon a broken reed. 

Thou too art ended — what is left me now ? 

For I have anguish yet to bear — and how 1 

I know not that — but in the innate force 

Of my own spirit shall be found resource. 

I have not sunk, for I had no remorse, 

Nor cause for such: they call'd me mad — and why? 

Leonora ! wilt not ffioii reply ? 

1 was indeed delirious in my heart 
To lift my love so lofty as thou art ; 
But still my frenzy was not of the mind ; 

I knew my fault, and feel my punishment 
Not less because I suffer it unbent. 



• At Ferrara (in the library) are prosorved the oriffinal 
MSS. of Tasso's Gienisaleiiiine and of GuARiNi's Pastor 
Fido, with letters of Tasso, one from Titian to Ariosto ; 
and the inkstand and chair, the tomb and the house of the 
latter. But as misfortune has a greater interest for pos- 
terity, and little or none for the contemporary, the cell 
where Tasso was confined in the hospital of St. Anna 
attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the 
monument of Abiosto— at least it had this effect on me. 



That thou wert beautiful, and I not blind. 

Hath been the sin which shuts me from mankind ; 

But let them go, or torture as'they will. 

My heart can multiply thine image still; 

Successful love may sate itself away, 

The wretched are the faithful ; 'tis their fate 

To have all feeling save the one decay. 

And every passion into one dilate. 

As rapid rivers into ocean pour; 

But ours is fathomless, and hath no shore. 

Above me, hark ! the long and maniac cry 

Of minds and bodies in captivity. 

And hark ! the lash and the increasing howl. 

And the half-inarticulate blasphemy! 

There be some here with worse than frenzy foul, 

Some who do still goad on the o'er-labour'd mind, 

And dim the little light that's left behind 

With needless torture, as their tyrants will 

Is wound up to the lust of doing ill ; 

With these and with their victims am I class'd. 

Mid sounds and sights like these long years have 

pass'd ; 
Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close: 
So let it be — for then I shall repose. 
I have been patient, let me be so yet ; 
I had forgotten half I would forget, 
But it revives — oh ! would it were my lot 
To be forgetful as I am forgot ! — 
Feel I not wroth with those who bade me dwell 
In this vast lazar-house of many woes ! 
M'hcre laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind. 
Nor words a language, nor even men mankind ; 
Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows, 
And each is tortured in his separate hell — 
For we are crowded in our solitudes — 
Many, but each divided by the wall. 
Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods; — 
While all can hear, none heeds his neighbour's 

call- 
None ! save that One, the veriest wretch of all. 
Who was not made to be the mate of these, 
Nor bound between Distraction and Disease. 
Feci I not wroth with those who placed me here'' 
Who have debased me in the minds of men, 
Debarring me the usage of my own, 
Blighting my life in best of its career. 
Branding my thoughts as things to shun and fear? 
Would I not pay them back these pangs again. 
And teach them inward sorrow's stifled groan? 
The struggle to be calm, and cold distress, 
Which undermines our stoical success 1 
No ! — still too proud to be vindictive — I 
Have pardon'd princes' insults, and would die. 
Yes, sister of my sovereign ! for thy sake 
I weed all bitterness from out my breast. 
It hath no business where f/iuii art a guest; 
Thy brother hates — but I can not detest; 
Thou pitiest not — but I can not forsake. 
Look on a love which knows not to despair. 
But all unijuench'd is still my better part, 
Dwelling deep in my shut and silent heart 
As dwells the gather'd lightning in its cloud, 
Encompass'd with its dark and rolling shroud, 
Till struck — forth flies the all-ethereal dart ! 
And thus at the collision of thy name 



LORD BYRON. 



219 



The vivid thought still flashes through my frame, 

And for a moment all things as they were 

Flit by me ; — they are gone — I am the same. 

And yet my love without ambition grew ; 

I knew thy state, my station, and I knew 

A princess was no love-mate for a hard ; 

I told it not, I breathed it not, it was 

Sufficient to itself, its own reward ; 

And if my eyes reveal'd it, tliey, ;ilas! 

Were punish'd by the silentness of thine, 

And yet I did not venture to repine. 

Thou wert to me a crystal-girded siirinc, 

Worshipp'd at holy distance, and around 

Hallow'd and meekl}' kiss'd the saintly ground ; 

Not for thou wert a princess, but that love 

Hath robed thee with a glory, and array'd 

Thy lineaments in beauty that dismay 'd — 

Oh ! not dismay'd — but awed, like one above; 

And in that sweet severity there was 

A something which all softness did surpass — 

I know not how — thy genius master'd mine — 

My star stood still before thee ; — if it were 

Presumptuous thus to love without design, 

That sad fatality hath cost me dear ; 

But thou art dearest still, and I should be 

Fit for this cell, which wrongs me, but for thee. 

The very love which lock'd me to my chain 

Hath lighten'd half its weight; and for the rest, 

Though heavy, lent me vigour to sustain, 

And look to thee with undivided breast 

And foil the ingenuity of pain. 

It is no marvel — from my very birth 

My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade 

And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth; 

Of objects all inanimate I made 

Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers, 

And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise, 

Where I did lay me down within the shade 

Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours. 

Though I was chid for wandering; and the wise 

Shook their white, aged heads o'er me, and said 

Of such materials wretched men were made. 

And such a truant boy would end in wo. 

And that the only lesson was a blow; 

And then they smote me, and I did not weep, 

But cursed them in my heart, and to my haunt 

Return'd and wept alone, and dream'd again 

The visions which arise without a sleep. 

And with my years my soul began to pant 

With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain, 

And the whole heart exhaled into one want, 

But undefined and wandering, till the day 

I found the thing I sought, and that was thee ; 

And then I lost my being all to be 

Absorb'd in thine — the world was past away — 

Thou didst annihilate the earth to me ! 

I loved all solitude — but little thought 

To spend I know not what of life, remote 

From all communion with existence, save 

The maniac and his tyrant ; had I been 

Their felbnv, many years ere this had seen 

My mind like theirs corrupted to its grave. 

But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave? 

Perchance in such a cell we sulTer more 

Than the wreck'd sailor on his desert shore; 



The world is all before him — mine is here, 
Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier. 
What though he perish, he may lift, his eye 
And with a dying ghnice upbraid the sky— r 
I will not raise my own in such reproof. 
Although 'lis clouded by my dungeon roof. 
Yet do I feel at times my mind decline, 
But with a sense of its decay: — I see 
Unwonted lights along my prison shine, 
And a strange demon, who is vexing me 
With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below 
The feeling of the healthful and the free ; 
But much to one, who long hath sufi'er'd so, 
Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place, 
An ] all that may lie borne, or can debase. 
I thought mine enemies had been but man, 
But spirits may be leagued with them — all earth 
Abandons — Heaven forgets nie ; — in the dearth 
Of such defence the jjowcrs of evil can. 
It may be, tempt me fuither, and prevail 
Against the outworn creature they assail. 
Why in this furnace is my spirit proved 
Like steel in tempering fire 1 because I loved 1 
Because I loved what not to love, and see. 
Was more or less than mortal, and than me. 
I once was quick in feeling — that is o'er; — 
My scars are callous, or I should have dash'd 
My brain against these bars as the sun flash'd 
In mockery through them ; — if I bear and bore 
The much I have recounted, and the more 
Which hath no words, 'tis that I would not die 
And sanction with self-slaughter the dull lie 
Which snared me here, and with the brand of shame 
Stamp madness deep into my memory. 
And woo compassion to a blighted name. 
Sealing the sentence which my foes proclaim. 
No — it shall be immortal! — and I make 
A future temple of my present cell. 
Which nations yet shall visit for my sake. 
While thou, Ferrara ! when no longer dwell 
The ducal chiefs within thee, shall fall down. 
And crumbling piecemeal view thy heartless halls, 
A poet's wreath shall be thine only crown, 
A poet's dungeon thy most far renown. 
While strangers wonder o'er thy unpeopled walls ! 
And thou, Leonora ! thou — who wert ashamed 
That such as I could love — who blush'd to hear 
To less than moiiarchs that thou couldst be dear, 
Go ! tell thy brother that my heart, untamed 
By grief, years, weariness — and it may be 
A taint of that he would impute to me — 
From long infection of a den like this. 
Where the mind rots congenial with the abyss. 
Adores thee still; — and add — that when the towers 
And battlements which guard his joyous hours 
Of banquet, dance, and revel, are forgot, 
Or left untended in a dull repose. 
This — this shall be a consecrated spot ! 
But thou — when all that birth and lieauty throws 
Of magic round thee is extinct — shall have 
One half the laurel which o'ershades my grave. 
No power in death can tear our names apart. 
As none in life could rend thee from my heart. 
Yes, Leonora ! it shall be our fate 
To be entwined for ever — but too late ! 



220 



LORD BYRON. 



THE DREAM. 

Onn life is twofold: sleep hath its own world, 
A boundary between the things misnamed 
Death and existence ; sleep hath its own world, 
And a wide realm of wild reality, 
And dreams in their development have breath. 
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy : 
They leave a weiijht upon our waking thoughts. 
They take a weight from off our waking toils. 
They do divide our being; they become 
A portion of ourselves as of our time, 
And look like heralds of eternity : 
They pass like spirits of the past, — they speak 
Like sybils of the future ; they have power — 
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain; 
They make us what we were not — what they will. 
And shake us with the vision that's gone by, — 
The dread of vanish'd shadows. Are they so ] 
Is not the past all shadow 1 What are they ? 
Creations of llie mind'? The mind can make 
Substance, and people planets of its own 
With beings brighter than have been, — and give 
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. 
I would recall a vision which I dream'd 
Perchance in sleep, — for in itself a thought, 
A slumbering thought, is capable of years, 
And curdles a long life into one hour. 

I saw two beings in the hues of youth 
Standing upon a liill, a gentle hill. 
Green and of mild declivity, — the last 
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such. 
Save that there was no sea to lave its base. 
But a most living landscape, and the wave 
Of woods and corn-fields, and the abodes of men 
Scatter'd at intervals, and wreathing smoke 
Arising from such rustic roofs; the hill 
Was crown'd with a peculiar diadem 
Of trees, in circular array, so fix'd, — 
Not by the sport of nature, but of man : 
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there 
Gazing; the one, on all that was beneath — 
Fair as herself — but the boy gazed on her : 
And both were young, and one was beautiful ; 
And both were young, yet not alike in youth. 
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge. 
The maid was on the eve of womanhood ; — 
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart 
Had far outgrown his years ; and, to his eye. 
There was but one beloved face on earth — 
And that was shining on him: he had look'd 
Upon it till it could not pass away ; 
He had no breath, no being, but in hers : 
She was his voice ; — he did not speak to her. 
But trembled on her words : she was his sight, 
For his eye follow'd hers, and saw with hers. 
Which colour'd all his objects; — he had ceased 
To live within himself; she was his life, — 
The ocean to the river of his thoughts, 
Which terminated all ! upon a tone, 
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow. 
And his cheek change tempestuously; — his heart 
Unknowing of its cause of agony. 
But she ill these fond feelings had no share : 



Her sighs were not for him ! to her he was 

Even as a brother, — but no more : 'twas much, 

For brotherless she was, save in the name 

Her infant friendship had bestow'd on him ; 

Herself the solitary scion left 

Of a time-honour'd race. It was a name [why 1 

Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not, — and 

Time taught him a deep answer — when she loved 

Another ! even now she loved another ; 

And on the summit of that hill she stood 

Looking afar, if yet her lover's steed 

Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew. 

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. 
There was an ancient mansion, and before 
Its walls there was a steed caparison'd : 
Within an antique oratory stood 
The boy of whom I spake ; — he was alone, 
And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon 
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced 
Words which I could not guess of; then he lean'd 
His bow'd head on his hands, and shook as 'twere 
With a convulsion, — then arose again. 
And, with his teeth and quivering hands, did tear 
What he had written ; but he shed no tears. 
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow 
Into a kind of quiet : as he paused. 
The lady of his love re-enter'd there ; 
She was serene and smiling then, — and yet 
She knew she was by him beloved ! she knew, 
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart 
Was darken'd with her shadow ; and she saw 
That he was wretched, — but she saw not all. 
He rose, and, with a cold and gentle grasp, 
He took her hand ; a moment o'er his face 
A tablet of unutterable thoughts 
Was traced, — and then it faded as it came : 
He dropp'd the hand he held, and with slow steps 
Retired, — but not as bidding her adieu; 
For they did part with mutual smiles : he pass'd 
Fi-om out the massy gate of that old hall. 
And mounting on his steed he went his way. 
And ne'er repass'd that hoary threshold more ! 

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. 
The boy was sprung to manhood : in the wilds 
Of fiery climes he made himself a home. 
And his soul drank their sunbeams ; he was girt 
With strange and dusky aspects ; he was not 
Himself like what he had been : on the sea 
And on the shore he was a wanderer! 
There was a mass of many images 
Crowded like waves upon me ; but he was 
A part of all, — and in the last he lay 
Reposing from the noontide sultriness, 
Couch'd among fallen columns, in the shade 
Or ruin'd walls, that had survived the names 
Of those who rear'd them : by his sleeping side 
Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds 
Were fasten'd near a fountain ; and a man, 
Clad in a flowing garb, did watch the while. 
While many of his tribe slumber'd around ; 
And they were canopied by the blue sky — 
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful. 
That God alone was to be seen in heaven. 

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. 
The lady of his love was wed with one 



LORD BYRON. 



231 



Who did not love her better : in her ho7ne, 
A thousand leagues from his, — her native home, 
She dwelt begirt with growing infaney. 
Daughters and sons of beauty, — but behold ! 
Upon her face there was the tint of grief, 
The settled shadow of an inward strife, 
And an unquiet drooping of the eye, 
As if its lid were charged with unshed tears. 
What could her grief be ? — she had all she loved ; 
And he who had so loved her was not there 
To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish. 
Or ill repress'd affliction, her pure thoughts. 
What could her grief be] — she had loved him not, 
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved ; 
Nor could he be a part of that which prey'd 
Upon her mind, — a spectre of the past. 

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. 
The wanderer was return'd. I saw him stand 
Before an altar, with a gentle bride : 
Her face was fair, — but was not that which made 
The starlight of his boyhood ! as he stood 
Even at tlie altar, o'er his brow there came 
The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock 
That in the antique oratory shook 
His bosom in its solitude; and then, 
As in that hour, a moment o'er his face 
The tablet of unutterable thoughts 
Was traced, — and then it faded as it came ; 
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke 
The fitting vows, — but heard not his own words ; 
And all things reel'd around him! he could see 
Not that which was, nor that which should have 
But the old mansion, and the accustom'd hall, [been ; 
And the remember'd chambers, and the place. 
The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade, — 
All things pertaining to that place and hour, 
And her who was his destiny, came back. 
And thrust themselves between him and the light: 
What business had they there at such a time 1 

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. 
The lady of his love, — oh ! she was changed 
As by the sickness of the soul: her mind 
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes, — 
They had not their own lustre, but the look 
Which is not of t'le earth : she was become 
The queen of a fantastic realm ; her thoughts 
Were combinations of disjointed things ; 
And forms — impalpable and unperceived 
Of others' sight — familiar were to hers. 
And this the world calls frenzy ! but the wise 
Have a fir deeper madness ; and the glance 
Of melancholy is a fearful gift: 
What is it but the telescope of truth ! 
Which strips the distance of its fantasies, 
And brings life near in utter nakedness, 
Making the cold reality too real ! 

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. 
The wanderer was alone as heretofore; 
The beings tliat surrounded him were gone, 
Or were at war witli him! he was a mark 
For blight and desolation. — compass'd round 
With hatred and contention: pain was mix'd 
In all wliich was served up to him, until, 
I. ike to the Pontic monarch of old days. 
He fed on poisons, and they had no power, — 



But were a kind of nutriment: he lived 

Through that which had been death to many men. 

And made him friends of mountains: with the stars 

And the quick spirit of the universe 

He held his dialogues ; and they did teach 

To him the magic of their mysteries ; 

To hiin the book of night was open'd wide, 

And voices from the deep abyss reveal'd 

A marvel and a secret — be it so. 

My dream was past ; it had no further change. 
It was of a strange order, that the doom 
Of these two creatures should be thus traced out 
Almost like a reality — the one 
To end in madness — both in misery. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 



SONNET ON CHILLON. 

Etf.hnal spirit of the chainless mind ! 
Brightest in dungeons. Liberty! thou art. 
For there thy habitation is the heart — 

The heart which love of thee alone can bind ; 

And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd — 
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayle.ss gloom. 
Their country conquers with their martyrdom, 

And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. 

Chillon ! thy prison is a holy place. 

And thy sad floor an altar — for 't was trod. 

Until his very steps have left a trace 

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod. 

By Bonnivard ! — May none those marks efface ! 

For they appeal from tyranny to God. 



Mr hair is gray, but not with years, 
Nor grew it white 
In a single night, 
As men's have grown from sudden fears: 
My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil, 

But rusted with a vile repose. 
For they have been a dungeon's spoil. 

And mine has been the fate of those 
To whom the goodly earth and air 
Are bann'd and barr'd — forbidden fare; 
But tliis was for my father's faith 
I suflTc'r'd chains and courted death; 
That fither perish'd at the stake 
For tenets he would not forsake ; 
And for the same his lineal race 
In darkness found a dwelling-place; 
We were seven — who now are one, 

Six in youth and one in age, 
Fiiiish'd as they had begun. 

Proud of Persecution's rage ; 
One in (ire, and two in field. 
Their belief with blood have seal'd ; 
Dving as their father died, 
For the (Jod their foes denied ; 
Tliree were in a dungeon cast. 
Of whom this wreck is left the last. 

T 2 



222 



LORD BYRON. 



There are seven pillars of gothic mould, 
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old, 
There are seven columns, massy and gray. 
Dim with a dull impi'ison'd ray, 
A sunbeam which hath lost its way, 
And through the crevice and the cleft 
Of the thick wall is fallen and left ; 
Creeping o'er the floor so damp. 
Like a marsh's meteor lamp : 
And in each pillar there is a ring. 

And in each ring there is a chain ; 
That iron is a cankering thing, 

For in these Hmhs its teeth remain. 
With marks that will not wear away. 
Till I have done with this new day. 
Which now is painful to these eyes. 
Which have not seen the sun so rise 
For years — I cannot count them o'er ; 
I lost their long and heavy score 
When my last brother droop'd and died. 
And I lay living by his side. 

III. 
They chain'd us each to a column stone, 
And we were three — yet, each alone : 
We (?ould not move a single pace. 
We could not see each other's face, 
But with that pale and livid light 
That made us strangers in our sight ; 
And thus together — yet apart, 
Fctter'd in hand, but pined in heart; 
'Twas still some solace, in the dearth 
Of the pure elements of earth. 
To hearken to each other's speech, 
And each turn comforter to each 
With some new hope, or legend old, 
Or song heroically bold ; 
But even these at length grew cold. 
Our voices took a dreary tone. 
An echo of the dungeon-stone, 

A grating sound — not full and free. 
As they of yore were wont to be; 
It might be fuicy — but to me 
They never sounded like our own. 

IV. 

I was the eldest of the three. 

And to uphold and cheer the rest 
I ought to do — and did my best — 

And each did well in his degree. 

The youngest, whom my father loved, 

Because our mother's brow was given 

To him — with eyes as blue as heaven. 
For him my soul was sorely moved ; 

And truly might it be distrest 

To see such bird in such a nest ; 

For he was beautiful as day — 
(When day was beautiful to me 
As to yonng eagles, being free) — 
A polar day, which will not see 

A sunset till its summer 's gone. 
Its sleepless summer of long light, 

The snow-c'.ad offspring of the sun : 
And thus he was as pure and bright. 

And in his natural spirit gay, 



With tears for naught but others' ills. 
And then they flow'd like mountain rills. 
Unless he could assuage the wo 
Which he abhorr'd to view below. 

V. 

The other was as pure of mind, 
But form'd to combat with his kind; 
Strong in his frame, and of a mood 
Which 'gainst the world in war had stood. 
And perish'd in the foremost rank 

With joy : but not in chains to pine: 
His spirit withor'd with their clank, 

I saw it silently decline — 

And so perchance in sooth did mine ; 
But yet I forced it on to cheer 
Those relics of a home so dear. 
He v/as a hunter of the hills. 

Had foUow'd there the deer and wolf; 

To him tliis dungeon was a gulf. 
And fetter'd feet the worst of ills. 

VI. 

Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls. 
A thousand feet in depth below 
Its massy waters meet and flow ; 
Thus much the fathom-line was sent 
From Chillon's snow-white battlement,* 

Which round about the wave enthrals; 
A double dungeon wall and wave 
Have made — and like a living grave. 
Below the surface of the lake 
The dark vault lies wherein we lay, 
We heard it ripple night and day ; 

Sounding o'er our heads it knock'd; • 
And I have felt the winter's spray 
Wash through the bars when winds were high 
And wanton in the happy sky ; 

And then the very rock hath rock'd, 

And I have felt it shake, unshock'd, 
Because I could have smiled to see 
The death that would have set me free. 

VII. 

I said my nearer brother pined, 
I said his mighty heart declined : 

* The Chateau de Chilhin is situated between Clareng 
and Villeneuv(>, which last is at one extremity of the Lake 
of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, 
and opposite are llie hei^'hls of Meillerie and the range of 
Alps above Bnveret and 8t. Gingo. 

Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent ; below it, wash- 
ing its walls, the lake has been falhoiiied to the depth of 
800 feet, (French measure :) within it are a ranee of dun- 
geons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently 
prisoners of slate, were confined. Across one of the 
vaults is a beam blai k with age, on which we were in- 
formed that the condemned were formerly executed. In 
the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, eight, one being 
half-merged in the wall ; in some of these are rings for 
the fetters and the fettered: in the pavement the steps 
of Bonnivard have left their traces— he was confined here 
several years. 

It is by this rastle that Rousseau has fixed the catas- 
trophe of his Ilelciise, in the rescue of one of her child- 
ren by .Tulle from the water ; the shock of wliiih, and 
the illness produced by the immersion, is the cause of her 
death. 

The chateau is large, and seen along the lake for a 
great distance. The walls are white. 



-J 



LORD BYRON. 223 


He loathed and put away his food ; 


Whose tints as gently sunk away 


It was not that 't was coarse and rude, 


Asa departing rainbow's ray — 


For we were used to hunters' fare, 


An eye of most transparent light. 


And for the like had little care : 


That almost made the dungeon bright. 


The milk drawn from the mountain goat 


And not a word of murmur — not 


Was changed for water from the moat ; 


A groan o'er his untimely lot, — 


Our bread was such as captives' tears 


A little talk of better days. 


Have moisten'd many a thousand years. 


A little hope my own to raise. 


Since man first pent his fellow-men 


For I was sunk in silence — lost 


Like brutes within an iron den : 


In this last loss, of all the most; 


But what were these to us or him ! 


And then the sighs he would suppress 


These wasted not his heart or limb : 


Of fainting nature's feebleness. 


My brother's soul was of that mold 


More slowly drawn, grew less and less: 


Which in a palace had grown cold, 


I listen'd, but I could not hear — 


Had his free breathing been denied 


I eall'd, for I was wild with fear; 


The range of the steep mountain's side ; 


I knew 't was hopeless, but my dread 


But why delay the truth ? — he died. 


Would not be thus admonished ; 


I saw, and could not hold his head, 


I eall'd, and thought I heard a sound — 


Nor reach his dying hand — nor dead. 


I burst my chain with one strong bound, 


Though hard I strove, but strove in vain, 


And rush'd to him : — I found him not, 


To rend and gnash my bonds in twain. 


/ only stirr'd in this black spot. 


He died — and they unlock'd his chain. 


I only lived — / only drew 


And scoop'd for him a shallow grave 


The accursed breath of dungeon-dew ; 


Even from the cold earth of our cave. 


The last — the sole — the dearest link 


I begg'd them, as a boon, to lay 


Between me and the eternal brink. 


His corse in dust whereon the day 


Which bound me to my failing race, 


Might shine — it was a foolish thought. 


Was broken in this fatal place. 


But then within my brain it wrought. 


One on the earth, and one beneath — 


That even in death his freeborn breast 


My brothers — both had ceased to breathe : 


In such a dungeon could not rest. 


I took that hand which lay so still. 


I might have spared my idle prayer — 


Alas! my own was full as chill ; 


They coldly laugh'd — and laid him there. 


I had not strength to stir, or strive, 


The flat and turlless earth above 


But felt that I was still alive — 


The being we so much did love; 


A frantic feeling, when we know 


His empty chain above it leant. 


That what we love shall ne'er be so. 


Such murder's fitting monument! 


I know not why 


vni. 


I could not die. 


But he, the favourite and the flower, 


I had no earthly hope — but faith, 


Most cherish'd since his natal hour. 


And that forbade a selfish death. 


His mother's image in fair face. 




The infant love of all his race, 


IX. 


His martyr'd father's dearest thought, 


What next befell me then and there 


My latest care, for whom I sought 


I know not well — I never knew — 


To hoard my life, that his might be 


First came the loss of light, and air, 


Less wretched now, and one day free ; 


And then of darkness too: 


He, too, who yet had held untjred 


I had no thought, no feeling — none — 


A spirit natural or inspired — 


Among the stones I stood a stone. 


He, too, was struck, and day by day 


And was, scarce conscious what I wist, 


Was wither'd on the stalk away. 


As shruhless crags within the mist; 


Oh God ! it is a fearful thing 


For all was blank, and bleak, and gray; 


To see the human soul take wing 


It was not night — it was not day. 


In any shape, in any mood : — 


It was not even the dungeon-light, 


I 've seen it rushing forth in blood; 


So hateful to my heavy sight. 


I 've seen it on the breaking ocean 


But vacancy absorbing space. 


Strive with a swoln, convulsive motion; 


And fixedness — without a place; 


I 've seen the sick and ghastly bed 


There were no stars — no earth — no time — 


Of Sin delirious with its dread : 


No check — no change — no good — no crime — 


But these were horrors — this was wo 


But silence, and a stirless breath 


Unmix'd with such — but sure and slow: 


Which neither was of life nor death; 


He faded, and so calm and meek, 


A sea of stagnant idleness, 


So poftly worn, so sweetly weak. 


Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless. 


So tearless, yet so tender — kind. 




And grieved for those he left behind ; 


X. 


With all the while a cheek whose bloom 


A light broke in upon my brain, — 


Was as a mockery of the tomb, 


It was the carol of a bird; 



224 



LORD BYRON. 



It ceased — and then it came again, 

The sweetest song ear ever heard, 
And mine was thankful till my eyes 
Ran over witli the glad surprise, 
And they that moment could not see 
I was the mate of" misery ; 
But then by dull degrees came back 
My senses to their wonted track : 
I saw the dungeon walls and floor 
Close slowly round me as before ; 
I saw the glimmer of the sun 
Creeping as it before had done ; 
But through the crevice where it came 
That bird was perch'd as fond and tame, 

And tamer than upon the tree ; 
A lovely bird with azure wings, 
And song that said a thousand things, 

And seem'd to say them all for me ! 
I never saw its like before, 
I ne'er shall see its Ukeness more : 
It seem'd like me to want a mate, 
But was not half so desolate. 
And it was come to love me when 
None lived to love me so again, 
And cheering from my dungeon's brink. 
Had brought me back to feel and thinks 
I know not if it late were free. 

Or broke its cage to perch on mine. 
But knowing well captivity, 

Sweet bird ! I could not wish for thine : 
Or if it were, in winged guise, 
A visitant from Paradise ; 
For — Heaven forgive that thought! the while 
Which made me both to weep and smile ; 
I sometimes deem'd that it might be 
My brother's soul come down to me ; 
But then at last away it flew, 
And then 't was mortal — well I knew, 
For he would never thus have flown. 
And left me twice so doubly lone, — 
Lone — as the corse v^itliin its shroud, 
Lone — as a solitary cloud, 

A sinsjle cloud on a sunny day, 
While all the rest of heaven is clear, 
A frown upon the atmosphere. 
That hath no business to appear 

When skies are blue, and earth is gay. 



A kind of change came in my fate ; 
My keepers grew compassionate. 
I know not what had maile them so, 
They were inured to sights of wo. 
But so it was : — my broken chain 
With links unfastcn'd did remain: 
And it was liberty to stride 
Along my cell from side to side. 
And up and down, and then athwart, 
And tread it over every part; 
And round the pillars one by one. 
Returning where my walk begun. 
Avoiding only, as I trod, 
My brothers' graves without a sod ; 
For if I thought with heedless tread 
My step profaned their lowly bed. 



My breath came gaspingly and thick. 
And my crushed heart fell blind and sick. 

xir. 
I made a footing in the wall : 

It was not therefrom to escape, 
For I had buried one and all 

Who loved me in a human shape; 
And the whole earth would henceforth be 
A wider prison unto me : 
No child — no sire — no kin had I, 
No partner in my misery ; 
I thought of this, and I was glad, 
For thought of them had made me mad ; 
But I was curious to ascend 
To my barr'd windows, and to bend 
Once more, upon the mountains high, 
The quiet of a loving eye. 

XIII. 

I saw them — and they were the same, 
They were not changed like me in frame ; 
I saw their thousand years of snow 
On high — their wide, long lake below. 
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow ; 
I heard the torrents leap and gush 
O'er channell'd rock and broken bush; 
I saw the whiVe-wall'd distant town, 
And whiter sails go skimming down; 
And then there was a little isle. 
Which in my very face did smile, 

The only one in view ; 
A small, green isle, it seem'd no more. 
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor; 
But in it there were three tall trees. 
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze. 
And by it there were waters flowing, 
And on it there were young flowers growing 

Of gentle breath and hue. 
The fish swam by the castle wall, 
And they seem'd joyous each and all; 
The eagle rode the rising blast, 
Methought he never flew so fast 
As then to me he seem'd to fly ; 
And then new tears came in my eye, 
And I felt troubled — and would fain 
I had not left my recent chain ; 
And when I did descend again. 
The darkness of my dim abode 
Fell on me as a heavy load ; 
It was as is a new-dug grave. 
Closing o'er one we sought to save. 
And yet my glance, too much opprest, 
Had almost need of such a rest. 

XIT. 

It might be months, or years, or days — 

I kept no count — I took no note, 
I had no hope my eyes to raise. 

And clear them of their dreary mote; 
At last men came to set me free, 

I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where ; 
It was at length the same to me,^p 
Fetter'd or fetterless to be : 

I learn'd to love despair. 
And thus, when they appear'd at last, 
And all my bonds aside were cast. 



LORD BYRON. 



225 



These heavy walls to me had grown 

A hermitage — and all my own ! 
And half I felt as they were come 
To tear me from a second home : 
With spiders I had friendship made, 
And watch'd them in their sullen trade ; 
Had seen the mice by moonlight play, 
And why should I feel less than they 1 
We were all inmates of one place, 
And I, the monarch of each race. 
Had power to kill — yet, strange to tell ! 
In quiet we had learn'd to dwell — 
My very chains and I grew friends, 
So much a long communion tends 
To make us what we are: — even I 
Regain'd my freedom with a sigh. 



WATERLOO. 

Thf.rf, was a sound of revelry by night, 
And Belgium's capital had gather'd then 
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright 
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men ; 
A thousand hearts beat happily, and when 
Music arose with its voluptuous swell. 
Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, 
And all went merry as a marriage-bell ; [knell ! 
But hush ! hark ! a deep sound strikes like a rising 

Did ye not hear it 1 No : 't was but the wind. 
Or the car rattling o'er the stony street ; 
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; [meet, 
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure 
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet — 
But hark! — that heavy sound breaks in once 
As if the clouds its echo would repeat; [more. 
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before ! [roar ! 
Arm ! — arm ! it is — it is — the cannon's opening 

Within a window'd niche of that high hall 
Sat Brunswick's fated chieftain ; he did hear 
That sound the first amidst the festival. 
And caught its tone with death's prophetic ear ; 
And when they smiled because he dcem'd it near. 
His heart more truly knew that peal too well 
Which stretch'd his father on a bloody bier, [quell : 
And roused the vengeance blood alone would 
He rush'd into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell. 

Ah ! then and there was hurrying to and fro, 
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, 
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago 
Blush'd at the praise of their own loveliness ; 
And there were sudden partings, such as press 
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs 
Which ne'er might be repeated ; who could guess 
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, [rise ! 
Since upon night so sweet, such awful morn could 

And there was mounting in hot haste : the steed, 
The musterii*||quadron, and the clattering car, 
Went pourin]^R)rward with impetuous speed, 
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war; 
And the deep thunder, peal on peal afar; 
And near, the beat of the alarming drum 
29 



Roused up the soldier ere the morning star ; 
While throng'd the citizens with terror dumb. 
Or whispering, with white lips — "The foe! They 
come, they come !" 

And wild and high the "Camcron'sgathering" rose! 
The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills 
Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes; — 
How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills. 
Savage and shrill ! But with the breath which fills 
Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers 
With the fierce native daring which instils 
The stirring memory of a thousand years, [ears ! 
And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's 

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, 
Dewy, with nature's tear-drops, as they pass, 
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, 
Over the unreturning brave — alas ! 
Ere evening to he trodden like the grass 
Which now beneath them, but above shall grow. 
In its next verdure, when this fiery mass 
Of living valour rolling on the foe, [and low. 
And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold 

Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, 
Last eve in beauty's circle proudly gay. 
The midnight brought the signal sound of strife, 
The morn the marshalling in arms, — the day 
Battle's magnificently stern array ! 
The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which, when rent. 
The earth is cover'd thick with other clay. 
Which her own clay shall cover, heap'd and pent. 
Rider and horse, — friend, foe, — in one red burial 
blent ! 



MONODY ON THE DEATH OF THE 
RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERIDAN. 

SrOKEN AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE. 

Whex the last sunshine of expiring day 
In summer's twilight weeps itself away, 
Who hath not felt the softness of the hour 
Sink on the heart, as dew along the flower 1 
With a pure feeling which absorbs and awes. 
While Nature makes that melancholy pause. 
Her breathing moment on the bridge where Time 
Of light and darkness forms an arch sublime: 
Who hath not shared that calm so still and deep, 
The voiceless thought which would not speak but 
A holy concord, and a bright regret, [weep, 

A glorious sympathy with suns that set 1 
'T is not harsh sorrow, but a tenderer wo. 
Nameless, but dear to gentle hearts below, 
Felt without bitterness, but full and clear, 
A sweet dejection, a transparent tear, 
Unmix'd with worldly grief or selfish stain, 
Shed without shame, and secret without pain. 
Even as the tenderness that hour instils 
When summer's da}' declines along the hills, 
So feels the fulness of our heart and eyes 
When all of genius which can perish dies. 
A mighty spirit is eclipsed — a power 
Hath pass'd from day to darkness — to whose hour 



226 



LORD BYRON. 



Of light no likeness is bequeath'd — no name, 
Focus at once of all the rays of fame ! 
The flash of wit — the bright intelligence, 
The beam of song— the blaze of eloquence, 
Set with their sun— but still have left behind 
The enduring produce of immortal mind ; 
Fruits of a genial morn and glorious noon, 
A deathless part of him who died too soon, 
But small that portion of the wondrous whole, 
These sparkling segments of that circling soul. 
Which all embraced, and lighten'd over all, 
To cheer, to pierce, to please, or to appal. 
From the charm'd council to the festive board, 
Of human feelings the unbounded lord; 
In whose acclaim the loftiest voices vied, [pride. 
The praised, the proud, who made his praise their 
When the loud cry of trampled Hindostan* 
Arose to heaven in her appeal from man, 
His was the thunder — his the avenging rod. 
The wrath — the delegated voice of God ! [blazed 
Which shook the nations through his lips— and 
Till vanquish'd senates trembled as they praised. 
And here, oh ! here, where yet all young and warm 
The gay creations of his spirit charm, 
The matchless dialogue, the deathless wit. 
Which knew not what it was to intermit; 
The glowing portraits, fresh from life, that bring 
Home to our hearts the truth from which they spring ; 
These wondrous beings of his fancy, wrought 
To fulness by the fiat of liis thought, 
Here in their first abode you still may meet. 
Bright with the hues of his Promethean heat, 
A halo of the light of other days, 
Which still the splendour of its orb betrays. 
Bat should there be to whom the fatal Wight 
Of failing wisdom yields a base delight ; 
Men who exult when minds of heavenly tone 
Jar in the music which was born their own ; 
Still let them pause— Ah ! little do they know 
That what to them seem'd vice might be but wo. 
Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze 
Is fix'd forever to detract or praise ; 
Repose denies her requiem to his name, 
And folly loves the martyrdom of fame. 
The secret enemy whose sleepless eye 
Stands sentinel, accuser, judge, and spy, 
The foe, the fool, the jealous, and the vain. 
The envious who but breathe in other's pain, 
Behold the host ! delighting to deprave, 
Who track the steps of glory to the grave, 
Watch every fault that daring genius owes 
Half to the ardour which its birth bestows, 
Distort the truth, accumulate the lie. 
And pile the pyramid of calumny ! 
These are his portion — but if, join'd to these 
Gaunt poverty should league with deep disease. 
If the high spirit must forget to soar, 
And stoop to strive with misery at the door, 
To soothe indignity — and face to face 
Meet sordid rage, and wrestle with disgrace, 

* See Fox, Burke, and Pitt's eulogy on Mr. Sheridan's 
speech on the charges exhibited against !Mr. Hastings in 
the House of Commons. Mr. Pitt entreated the House 
to adjourn, to give time for a calmer consideration of the 
question than could then occur after the immediate effect 
of that oration. 



To find in hope but the renew'd caress. 
The serpent-fold of further faithlessness, — 
If sucli^inay be the ills which men assail. 
What marvel if at last the mightiest fail 1 
Breasts to whom all the strength of feeling given 
Bear hearts electric, charged with fire from 
Black with the rude collision, inly torn, [heaven. 
By clouds surrounded, and on whirlwinds borne. 
Driven o'er the lowering atmosphere that nurst 
Thoughts which have turn'd to thunder — scorch — 
B ut far from us and from our mimic scene [and burst. 
Such things should be — if such have ever been ; 
Ours be the gentler wish, the kinder task. 
To give the tribute glory need not ask, 
To mourn the vanish'd beam, and add our mite 
Of praise in payment of a long delight. 
Ye orators ! whom yet our councils yield. 
Mourn for the veteran hero of your field ! 
The worthy rival of the wondrous Three /* 
Whose words were sparks of immortality ! 
Ye bards ! to whom the drama's muse is dear, 
He was your master — emulate him here / 
Ye men of wit and social eloquence ! 
He was your brother — bear his ashes hence ! 
While powers of mind, almost of boundless range, 
Complete in kind — as various in their change. 
While eloquence, wit, poesy, and mirth. 
That humble harmonist of care on earth. 
Survive within our souls — while lives our sense 
Of pride in merit's proud pre-eiuinence. 
Long shall we seek his likeness — long in vain. 
And turn to all of him which may remain. 
Sighing that Nature form'd but one such man. 
And broke the die — in moulding Sheridan ! 



THE ISLES OF GREECE. 

The isles of Greece ! the isles of Greece ! 

Where burning Sappho loved and sung. 
Where grew the arts of war and peace. 

Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung ! 
Eternal summer gilds them yet. 
But all, except their sun, is set. 

The Scian and the Teian muse. 
The hero's harp, the lover's lute. 

Have found the fame your shores refuse; 
Their place of birth alone is mute 

To sounds which echo further west 

Than your sires' " Islands of the Bless'd." 

The mountains look on Marathon — 
And Marathon looks on the sea ; 

And musing there an hour alone, 

I dream'd that Greece might still be free ; 

For, standing on the Persians' grave, 

I could not deem myself a slave. 

A king sate on the rocky brow 

Which looks o'er sea-born ^amis ; 

And ships, by thousands, lay below, 
And men in nations ; — all were his ! 



* Fox— Pitt— Burke. 



LORD BYRON. 



227 



He counted them at break of day — 
And when the sun set, where were they T 

And where are they 1 — and where art thou, 
My country 1 On thy voiceless shore 

The heroic hiy is tuneless now — 
The heroic bosom beats no more ! 

And must tliy lyre, so long divine, 

Degenerate into hands like mine 1 

'Tis something, in the dearth of fame, 
Though link'd among a f^^tter'd race. 

To feel at least a patriot's shame, 
Even as I sing, suffuse my face; 

For what is left the poet here ] 

For Greeks a blush — for Greece a tear. 

Must we but weep o'er days more bless'd ? 

Must we but blush 1 — -Our fathers bled. 
Earth ! render back from out thy breast 

A remnant of our Spartan dead ! 
Of the three hundred grant but three, 
To make a new Thermopyls. 

What, silent still ? and silent all ? 

Ah ! no; — the voices of the dead 
Sound like a distant torrent's fall, 

And answer, " Let one living head. 
Bat one arise, — we come, we come !" 
'Tis but the living who are dumb. 

In vain — in vain : strike other chords ;' 
Fill high the cup with Samian wine ! 

Leave battles to the Turkish hordes. 
And shed the blood of Scio's vine ! 

Hark ! rising to the ignoble call — 

How answers each bold bacchanal ! 

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet. 
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone 1 

Of two such lessons, why forget 
The nobler and the manlier one "? 

You have the letters Cadmus gave — 

Think ye he meant them for a slave ] 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! 

We will not think of themes like these. 
It made Anacreon's song divine; 

He served — but served Polycrates — 
A tyrant ; but our masters then 
Were still, at least, our countrymen. 

The tyrant or the Chersonese 

Was freedom's best and bravest friend, 
That tyrant was Miltiades ! 

Oh ! that the present hour would lend 
Another despot of the kind ! 
Such chains as his were sure to bind. 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! 

On Suli's rock and Parga's shore 
Exists the remnant of a line 

Such as the Doric mothers bore; 
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown, 
The Heracleidan blood might own. 

Trust not for freedom to the Franks — 
They have a king who buys and sells. 

In native swords, and native ranks. 
The only hope of courage dwells; 



But Turkish force and Latin fraud 
Would break your shield, however broad. 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! 

Our virgins dance beneath the shade — 
I see their glorious black eyes shine ; 

But, gazing on each glowing maid. 
My own the burning tear-drop laves, 
To think such breasts must suckle slaves. 

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep — 
Where nothing, save the waves and I, 

May hear our mutual murmurs sweep ; 
There, swan-like, let me sing and die : 

A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine — 

Dash down yon cup of Samian wine ! 



SOLILOQUY OF MANFRED. 

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops 
Of the snow-shining mountains. — Beautiful ! 
I linger yet with Nature, for the night 
Hath been to me a more familiar face 
Than that of man ; and in her starry shade 
Of dim and solitary loveliness, 
I learn'd the language of another world. 
I do remember me, that in my youth. 
When I was wandering, — upon such a night 
I stood within the Coliseum's wall. 
Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome ; 
The trees which grew along the broken arches 
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the star 
Shone through the rents of ruin ; from afar 
The watch-dog bay'd beyond the Tiber ; and 
More near from out the Caesars' palace came 
The owl's long cry, and interruptedly, 
Of distant sentinels the fitful song 
Begun and died upon the gentle wind. 
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach 
Appear'd to skirt the horizon, yet they stood 
Within a bowshot — Where the Caesars dwelt, 
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst 
A grove which springs through levell'd battlements, 
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths, 
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth ; — 
But the gladiators' bloody Circus stands, 
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection I 
While Ca>sars' chambers and the Augustan halls 
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay. — 
And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon 
All this, and cast a wide and tender light, 
Which soften'd down the hoar austerity 
Of rugged desolation, and fiU'd up. 
As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries. 
Leaving that beautiful which still was so. 
And making that which was not, till the place 
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er 
With silent worship of the great of old ! — 
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule 
Our spirits from their urns. — 

'T was such a night ! 
'T is strange that I recall it at this time ; 
But I have found our thoughts lake wildest flight 
Even at the moment when they should array 
Themselves in pensive order. 



228 



LORD BYRON. 



CECILIA METELLA. 

There is a stern round tower of other days, 
Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone, 
Such as an army's baffled strength delays, 
Standing with half its battlements alone. 
And with two thousand years of ivy grown. 
The garland of eternity, where wave 
The green leaves over all by time o'erthrown ; — 
What was this tower of strength 1 within its cave 
What treasure lay so lock'd, so hid 1 — A woman's 
grave. 

But who was she, the lady of the dead, 
Tomb'd in a palace? Was she chaste and fair? 
Worthy a king's — or more — a Roman's bed ! 
What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear? 
What daughter of her beauties was the heir ] 
How lived, how loved, how died she 1 was she not 
So honour'd — and conspicuously there. 
Where meaner relics must not dare to rot, 
Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot 1 

Was she as those who love their lords, or they 
Who love the lords of others 1 such have been 
Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say. 
Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien. 
Or the light air of Egypt's graceful queen, 
Profuse of joy — or 'gainst it did she war, 
Inveterate in virtue 1 Did she lean 
To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar 
Love from amongst her griefs ? — for such the af- 
fections are. 

Perchance she died in 3'outh : it may be, bow'd 
With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb 
That weigh'd upon her gentle dust, a cloud 
Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom 
In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom 
Heaven gives its favourites — early death ; yet shed 
A sunset charm around her, and illume, 
With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead. 
Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf like red. 

Perchance she died in age — surviving all. 
Charms, kindred, children — with the silver gray 
On her long tresses, which might yet recall, 
It may be, still a something of tlie day 
When they were braided, and her proud array 
And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed 
By Rome — But whither would conjecture stray 1 
Thus much alone we know — Metella died, [pride ! 
The wealthiest Roman's wife ; behold his love or 

I know not why — but, standing thus by thee, 
It seems as if I had thine inmate known, 
Thou tomb ! and other days come back on me 
With recollected music, though the tone 
Is changed and soleren, like the cloudy groan 
Of dying thunder on the distant wind ; 
Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone 
Till I had bodied forth the heated mind [behind; 
Forms from the flowing wreck which ruin leaves 

And from the planks, far shatter'd o'er the rocks. 
Built mo a little bark of hope, once more 
To battle with the ocean and the shocks 
Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar 



Which rushes on the solitary shore 
Where all lies founder'd that was ever dear : 
But could I gather from the wave-worn store 
Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer? 

There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what 
is here. 
Then let the winds howl on ! their harmony 
Shall henceforth be my music, and the night 
The sound shall temper with the owlets' cry, 
As I now hear them, in the fading light 
Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site. 
Answering each other on the Palatine, [bright. 
With their large eyes, all glistening gray and 
And sailing pinions. — Upon such a shrine 

What are our petty griefs? — let me not number mine. 



THE OCEAN. 

Oh ! that the desert were my dwelling-place, 
With one fair spirit for my minister, 
That I might all forget the human race. 
And, hating no one, love but only her ! 
Ye elements ! — in whose ennobling stir 
I feel myself exalted — Can ye not 
Accord me such a being ? Do I err 
In deeming such inhabit many a spot ? 
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. 

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore; 
There is society, where none intrudes, 
By the deep sea, and music in its roar : 
I love not man the less, but nature more, 
From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before. 
To mingle with the universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. 

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean — roll ! 
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; 
Man marks the earth with ruin — his control 
Stops with the shore ; — upon the watery plain 
The WTecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, 
W'hen for a moment, like a drop of rain, 
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, 
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and un- 
known. 

His steps are not upon thy paths, — thy fields 
Are not a spoil for him, — thou dost arise [wields 
And shake him from thee ; the vile strength he 
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, 
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, 
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray 
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies 
His petty hope in some near port or bay, 
And dashest him again to earth ; — there let him lay. 

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls 
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, 
And monarchs tremble in their capitals, 
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make 
Their clay creator the vain title take 
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war ; 



LORD BYRON. 



2-39 



These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, 
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar 
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. 

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee — 
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they 1 
Thy waters wasted them while they were free', 
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey 
The stranger, slave, or savage ; their decay 
Has dried up realms to deserts : — not so thou, 
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play — 
Time writes no wrinkle on thy azure brow — 
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. 

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form 
Glasses itself in tempests : in all time. 
Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm, 
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
Dark-heaving ; boundless, endless, and siibhme — 
The image of eternity — the throne 
Of the Invisible ; even from out thy slime 
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone 
Obeys thee ; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, 
alone. 

And I have loved thee. Ocean! and my joy 
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be 
Borne, like thy l)ubbles, onward ; from a boy 
I wanton 'd with thy breakers — they to me 
Were a delight ; and if the freshening sea 

• Made them a terror — 'twas a pleasing fear, 
For I was as it were a child of thee. 
And trusted to thy billows far and near. 

And laid thy hand upon thy mane — as I do here. 



TO THYRZA. 

WiTnocT a stone to mark the spot. 

And say, what truth might well have said 
By all, save one, perchance forgot. 

Ah, wherefore art thou lowly laid 1 
By many a shore and many a sea 

Divided, yet beloved in vain; 
The past, the future fled to thee 

To bid us meet — no — ne'er again ! 
Could this have been — a word, a look 

That softly said, " We part in peace," 
Had taught my bosom how to brook. 

With fainter sighs, thy soul's release. 
And didst thou not, since Death for thee 

Prepared a light and pangless dart. 
Once long for him thou ne'er shall see, 

Who hold, and holds thee in his heart ? 
Oh! who like him had watch'd thee here? 

Or sadly mark'd thy glazing eye 
In that dread hour ere death appear, 

When silent sorrow fears to sigh, 
Till all was past? But when no more 

'T was thine to reck of human wo, 
AflTecfion's heart-drops, gushing o'er. 

Had flow'd as fast — as now they flow. 
Shall they not flow, when many a day 

In these, to me, deserted towers. 
Ere call'd but for a time away, 

AflTection's mingling tears were ours ? 



Ours too the glance none saw beside; 

The smile none else might understand ; 
The whisper'd thought of hearts aUied, 

The pressure of the thrilling hand ; 
The kiss, so guiltless and refined. 

That love each warmer wish forbore ; 
Those eyes proclaim'd so pure a miiid. 

Even passion blush'd to plead for more. 
The tone, that taught me to rejoice. 

When prone, unlike thee to repine; 
The song, celestial from thy voice. 

But sweet to me from none but thine, 
The pledge we wore — I wear it still. 

But where is thine ? — ah, where art thou ? 
Oft have I borne the weight of ill, 

But never bent beneath till now ! 
Well hast thou left in life's best bloom 

The cup of wo for me to drain ; 
If rest alone be in the tomb, 

I would not wish thee here again : 
But if in worlds more blest than this 

Thy virtues seek a fitter sphere. 
Impart some portion of thy bliss. 

To wean me from mine anguish here. 
Teach me — too early taught by thee ! 

To hear, forgiving and forgiven : 
On earth thy love was such to me ; 

It fain would form my hope in heaven ! 



STANZAS. 

AwAT, away, ye notes of wo. 

Be silent, thou once soothing strain. 
Or I must flee from hence, for, oh ! 

I dare not trust those sounds again. 
To me they speak of brighter days — 
But lull the chords, for now, alas ! 
I must not think, I may not gaze 

On what I am — on what I was. 
The voice that made those sounds more sweet 

Is hush'd, and all their charms are fled ; 
And now their softest notes repeat 

A dirge, an anthem o'er the dead ! 
Yes, Thyrza ! yes, they breathe of thee. 

Beloved dust! since dust thou art; 
And all that once was harmony 

Is worse than discord to my heart ! 
'Tis silent all ! — but on my car 

The well-remember'd echoes thrill ; 
I hear a voice I would not hear, 

A voice that now might well be still : 
Yet oft my doubting soul 'twill shake ; 

Even slumber owns its gentle tone, 
Till consciousness will vainly wake 

To listen, though the dream be flown. 
Sweet Thyrza ! waking as in sleep, 

Thou art but now a lovclv dream ; 
A star that trembled o'er the deep. 

Then turn'd from earth its lender beam. 
But he, who through life's dreary way 

Must pass, when heaven is veil'd in wrath, 
A^'^ill long lament the vanish'd ray 
That scatter'd gladness o'er his path. 
U 



230 



LORD BYRON. 



TO THYRZA. 


ADIEU, ADIEU! MY NATIVE SHORE. 


One struggle move, and I am free 


" AniEi?, adieu ! my native shore 


From pangs that rend my heart in twain ; 


Fades o'er the waters blue ; 


One last long sigh to love and thee, 


The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar, 


Then back to busy life again. 


And shrieks the wild seamew. 


It suits me well to mingle now 


Yon sun that sets upon the sea 


With things that never pleased before : 


We follow in his flight; 


Though every joy is fled below, 


Farewell a while to him and thee, 


What future grief can touch me more ? 


My native land — Good-night ! 


Then bring me wine — the banquet bring ; 


« A few short hours, and he will i-ise 


Man was not form'd to live alone 


To give the morrow birth ; 


I'll be that light unmeaning thing 


And I shall hail the main and skies. 


That smiles with all, and weeps with none. 


But not my mother earth. 


It was not thus in days more dear — 


Deserted is my own good hall. 


It never would have been, but thou 


Its hearth is desolate ; 


H i>t fled, and loft me lonely here ; 


Wild weeds are gathering on the wall ; 


Thou'rt nothing, all are nothing now. 


My dog howls at the gate. 


In vain my lyre would lightly breathe ! 


" Come hither, hither, my little page ! 


The smile, that sorow fain would wear 


Why dost thou weep and wail ? 


Bat mocks the wo that lurks beneath, 


Or dost thou dread the billows' rage. 


Like roses o'er a sepulchre. 


Or tremlile at the gale 1 


Though gay companions o'er the bowl 


But dash the tear-drop from thine eye; 


Dispel a while the sense of ill ; 


Our ship is swift and strong : 


Though pleasure fires the maddening sou!, 


Our fleetest falcon scarce can fly 


The heart — the heart is lonely still ! 


More merrily along." 


On many a lone and lovely night 


"Let winds be shrill, let waves roll high. 


It sooth'd to gaze upon the sky ; 


I fear not wave nor wind ; 


For then I decm'd the heavenly light 


Yet marvel not. Sir Childe, that I 


Shone sweetly on thy pensive eye ; 


Am sorrowful in mind ; 


And oft I thought at Cynthia's noon, 


For I have from my father gone, 


When sailing o'er the _'Egean wave, 


A mother whom I love. 


" Now Thyrza gazes on that moon — " 


And have no friend, save these alone, 


Alas, it gleam'd upon her grave ! 


But thee — and one above. 


W' hen stretch'd on fever's sleepless bed. 


" My father bless'd me fervently. 


And sickness shrunk my throbbing veins, 


Yet did not much complain ; 


" 'T is comfort still," I faintly said, 


But sorely will my mother sigh 


"That Thyrza cannot know my pains." 


Till I come back again." — 


Like freedom to the time-worn slave, 


"Enough, enough, my little lad! 


A boon 't is idle then to give. 


Such tears become thine eye ; 


Relenting Nature vainly gave 


If T thy guileless bosom had. 


My life, when Thyrza ceased to live ! 


Mine own would not be dry. 


I\Iy Thyrza's pledge in better days, 


" Come hither, hither, my staunch yeoman, 


When love and life alike were new, 


Why dost thou look so pale ] 


How diilerent now thou meet'st my gaze ! 


Or dost thou dread a French foeman ? 


How tinged by time with sorrow's hue ! 


Or shiver at the galel" 


The heart that gave itself with thee 


«' Dcem'st thou I tremble for my life ! 


Is silent — ah, were mine as still I 


Sir (vhilile, I'm not so weak ; 


Though cold as e'en the dead can be, 


But thinking on an absent wife 


It feels, it sickens with the chill. 


Will blanch a faithful cheek. 



Thou bitter pledge ! thou mournful token ! 

Though painful, welcome to my breast! 
Still, still preserve that love unbroken. 

Or break the heart to which thou'rt press'd 
Time tempers love, but not removes, 

More hallow'd when its hope is fled : 
Oh ! what are thousand living loves 

To that which cannot quit the dead ? 



'My spouse and boys dwell near thy hall, 

Along the bordering lake, 
And when they on their fiither call, 

What answer shall she makel" — 
"Enough, enough, my yeoman good. 

Thy grief let none gainsay; 
But I, who am of lighter mood, 

Will laugh to flee away. 



LORD BYRON. 



231 



" For who would trust the seeming sighs 

Of wife or jiaramour ? 
Fresh feres will dry the bright blue eyes 

We late saw streaming o'er. 
J'or pleasures past I do not grieve, 

Nor perils gatiiering near ; 
My greatest grief is that I leave 

No thing that claims a tear. 

« And now I 'm in the world alone, 

Upon the wide, wide sea ; 
But why should I for others groan, 

When none will siij;h for me 1 
Perchance my dog will wiiine in vain, 

Till fed by stranger hands ; 
But long ere I come back again, 

He'd tear me where he stands. 

"With thee, my bark, I'll swiftly go 

Athwart the foaming brine ; 
Nor care what land thou bear'st me to. 

So not again to mine. 
Welcome, welcome, ye dark blue waves ! 

And when you fail my sight. 
Welcome, ye deserts, and ye caves ! 

My native land — Good-night !" 



THE EXECUTION OF HUGO. 

TiiF. convent bells are ringing, 

But mournfully and slow; 
In the gray square turrent swinging, 

With a deep sound, to and fro. 

Heavily to the heart they go ! 
Hark ! the hymn is singing — 

The song for the dead below, 

Or the living who shortly shall be so ! 
For a departing being's soul [knoll: 

The deaih-hyinn peals and the hollow bells 
He is near his mortal goal ; 
Kneeling at the friar's knee ; 
Sad to hear — and piteous to see — 
Kneeling on the bare cold ground. 
With the block before and the guards around — 
And the headman with his bare arm ready. 
That the blow may be both swift and steady. 
Feels if the axe be sharp and true — 
Since he set its edge anew : 
While the crowd in a speechless circle gather 
To see the son fall by the doom of the father ! 

It is a lovely hour as yet 

Before tlie summer sun shall set. 

Which rose upon that heavy day. 

And mock'd it with his steadiest ray; 

And his evening beams are shed 

Full on Hugo's fated head. 

As his last confession pouring 

To the monk, his doom deploring 

In penitential holiness, 

He bends to hear his accents bless 

With absolution such as may 

Wipe our mortal stains away. 

That high sun on his head did glisten, 

As he there did bow and listen — 



And the rings of chesnut hair 
Curl'd half down his neck so bare; 
But brighter still the beam was thrown 
Upon the axe which near him shone 
With a clear and ghastly glitter — 
Oh ! that parting hour was bitter ! 
Even the stern stood chill'd with awe ; 
Dark the crime, and just the law — 
Yet they shudder'd as they saw. 

The parting prayers are said and over 

Of that false son — and daring lover ! 

His beads and sins are all recounted. 

His hours to their last minute mounted — 

His mantling cloak before was strip[)'d. 

His bright brown locks must now be clipp'd ; 

'T is done — all closely arc they shorn — 

The vest which till this moment worn — 

The scarf which Parisina gave — 

Must not adorn him to the grave, 

Even that must now be thrown aside. 

And o'er his eyes the kerchief tied ; 

But no — that last indignity 

Shall ne'er approach his haughty eye. 

All feelings seemingly subdued. 

In deep disdain were half-renew'd. 

When headman's hands prepared to bind 

Those eyes which would not brook such blind, 

As if they dared not look on death. 

" No — yours my forfeit blood and breath — 

These hands are chain'd — but let me die 

At least with an unshackled eye — 

Strike:" — and as the word he said, 

Upon the block he bow'd his head ; 

These the last accents Hugo spoke 

" Strike" — and flashing fell the stroke . - 

Roll'd the head — and, gushing, sunk 

Back the stain'd and heaving trunk 

In the dust, which each deep vein 

Slaked with its ensanguined rain ; 

His eyes and lips a moment quiver, 

Convulsed and quick — then fix'd for ever. 

He died as erring man should die. 

Without display, without parade ; 

Meekly had he bow'd and pray'd. 

As not disdaining priestly aid, 
Nor desperate of all hope on high. 
And while before the prior kneeling. 
His heart was wean'il from earthly feeling; 
His wrathful sire — his paramour — 
What were they in such an hour I 
No more reproach — no more despair ; 
No thought but heaven — no word but prayer — 
Save the few which from him broke, 
When, bared to meet the headman's stroke, 
He claim'd to die with eyes unbound. 
His sole adieu to those around. 

Still as the lips that closed in death, 
Each gazer's bosom held his breath ; 
But yet, afar, from man to man, 
A cold electric shiver ran. 
As down the deadly blow descended 
On him whose life and love thus ended; 
And with a hushing sound compress'd, 
A sigh shrunk back on every breast ; 



232 



LORD BYRON. 



But no more thrilling noise rose there, 
Beyond the blow that to the block 
Pierced through with forced and sullen 
shock. 

Save one : — what cleaves the silent air 

So madly shrill, so passing wild 1 

That, as a mother's o'er her child, 

Done to death by sudden blow. 

To the sky these accents go, 

Like a soul's in endless wo. 

Through Azo's palace-lattice driven. 

That horrid voice ascends to heaven. 

And every eye is turn'd thereon ; 

But sound and sight alike are gone! 

It was a woman's shriek — and ne'er 

In madlier accents rose despair ; 

And those who heard it, as it past. 

In mercy wish'd it were the last. 

Hugo is fallen ; and, from that hour, 

No more in palace, hall, or bower. 

Was Parisina heard or seen : 

Her name — as if she ne'er had been — 

Was banish'd from each lip and ear. 

Like words of wantonness or fear; 

And from Prince Azo's voice, by none 

Was mention heard of wife or son ; 

No tomb — no memory had they; 

Theirs was unconsecrated clay ; 

At least the knight's who died that day : 

But Parisina's fate lies hid 

Like dust beneath the coffin lid: 

Whether in convent she abode, 

And won to heaven her dreary road, 

By blighted and remorseful years 

Of scourge, and fast, and sleepless tears ; 

Or if she fell by bowl or steel. 

For that dark love she dared to feel; 

Or if, upon the moment smote, 

She died by tortures less remote ; 

Jjike him she saw upon the block, 

With heart that shared the headman's shock. 

In quicken'd brokenness that came, 

In pity, o'er her shatter'd frame, 

None knevp — and none can ever know : 

But whatsoe'er its end below, 

Her life began and closed in wo ! 

And Azo found another bride, 

And goodly sons grew by his side; 

But none so lovely and so brave 

As him who withcr'd in the grave; 

Or if they were — on his cold eye 

Their growth but glanced unheeded by. 

Or noticed with a smother'd sigh. 

But never tear his check descended. 

And never smile his brow unbended, 

And o'er that fair broad brow were wrought 

The intersected lines of thought ; 

Those furrows which the burning share 

Of sorrow ploughs untimely there ; 

Scars of the lacerating mind. 

Which the soul's war doth leave behind. 

He was past all mirth or wo : 

Nothing more remain'd below 

But sleepless nights and heavy days; 

A mind all dead to scorn or praise. 



A heart which shunn'd itself — and yet 

That would not yield — nor could forget, 

Which, when it least appear'd to melt, 

Intensely thought — intensely felt : 

The deepest ice which ever froze 

Can only o'er the surface close — 

The living stream lies quick below, 

And flows — and cannot cease to flow. 

Still was his seal'd-up bosom haunted 

By thoughts which nature hath implanted ; 

Too deeply rooted thence to vanish, 

Howe'er our stifled tears we banish ; 

When, struggling as they rise to start, 

We check those waters of the heart ; 

They are not dried — -those tears unshed 

But flow back to the fountain-head, 

And, resting in their spring more pure, 

For ever in its depth endure. 

Unseen, unwept, but uncongeal'd. 

And cherish'd most where least reveal'd. 

With inward starts of feeling left. 

To throb o'er those of life bereft ; 

Without the power to fill again 

The desert gap which made his pain ; 

Without the hope to meet them where 

United souls shall gladness share. 

With all the consciousness that he 

Had only pass'd a just decree ; 

That they had wrought their doom of ill; 

Yet Azo's age was wretched still. 

I'he tainted branches of the tree, 

If lopp'd with care, a strength may give. 
By which the rest shall bloom and live 
All greenly fresh and wildly free ; 
But if the lightning, in its wrath, 
The waving boughs with fury scathe, 
The massy trunk the ruin feels, 
And never more a leaf reveals. 



DEATH OF LARA. 

Bes:i;ath a lime, remoter from the scene, 
Where but for him that strife had never been, 
A breathing, but devoted warrior lay : 
'T was Lara, bleeding fast from life away. 
His follower once, and now his only guide, 
Kneels Kaled, watchful o'er his welling side, [rush, 
And with his scarf would stanch the tides that 
With each convulsion, in a blacker gush ; 
And then, as his faint breathing waxes low, 
In feebler, not less fatal tricklings flow : 
He scarce can speak, but motions him 'tis vain. 
And merely adds another throb to pain. 
He clasps the hand that pang which would assuage. 
And sadly smiles his thanks to that dark page. 
Who nothing fears, nor feels, nor heeds, nor sees. 
Save that damp brow which rests upon his knees; 
Save that pale aspect, where the eye, though dim, 
Held all the light that shone on earth for him. 

The foe arrives, who long had search'd the field. 
Their triumph naught till Lara too should yield ; 
They would remove him, but they sec 'twere vain, 
And he regards them with a calm disdain. 



LORD BYRON. 



233 



That rose to reconcile him with his fate, 
And that escape to death from living hate: 
And Olho comes, and, leaping from his steed, 
Looks on the bleeding foe that made him bleed, 
And questions of his state ; he answers not, 
Scarce glances on him as on one forgot, 
And turns to Kalcd : — each remaining word 
They understood not, if distinctly heard ; 
His dying tones are in that other tongue, 
To which some strange remembrance wildly clung. 
They speak of other scenes, but what — is known 
To Kaled, whom their meaning reach'd alone; 
And he replied, though faintly, to their sound. 
While gazed the rest in dumb amazement round : 
They seem'd even then — that twain — unto the last 
To half-forget the present in the past ; 
To share between themselves some separate fate. 
Whose darkness none beside should penetrate, [tone 
Their words, though faint, were many — from the 
Their import those who heard could judge alone; 
From this, you might have deem'd young Kaled's 

death 
More near than Lara's, by his voice and breath, 
So sad, so deep, and hesitating broke 
The accents his scarce-moving pale lips spoke ; 
But Lara's voice, though low, at first was clear 
And calm, till murmuring death gasp'd hoarsely 
But from his visage little could we guess, [near ; 
So unrepentant, dark, and passionless ; 
Save that, when struggling nearer to his last. 
Upon that page his eye was kindly cast ; 
And once, as Kaled's answering accents ceased, 
Rose Lara's hand, and pointed to the east. 
Where (as then the breaking sun from high 
RoH'd back the clouds) the morrow caught his eye. 
Or that 'twas chance, or some remembcr'd scene. 
That raised his arm to point where sucli had been. 
Scarce Kaled seem'd to know, but turn'd away. 
As if his heart abhorr'd that coming day ; 
And shrunk his glance before that morning light. 
To look on Lara's brow — where all grew night. 
Yet sense seem'd left, though better were its loss ; 
For when one near display'd the absolving cross, 
And proffer'd to his touch the holy bead. 
Of which his parting soul might own the need. 
He look'd upon it with an eye profane, [disdain : 
And smiled — Heaven pardon! if 'twere with 
And Kaled, though he spoke not, nor withdrew 
From Lara's face his fix'd, despairing view. 
With brow repulsive, and with gesture swift. 
Flung back the hand which held the sacred gift. 
As if such but disturb'd the expiring, man, 
Nor seem'd to know his life but then began. 
That life of immortality, secure 
To none, save them whose faith in Christ is sure. 
But gasping heaved the breath that Lara drew. 
And dull the film along his dim eye grew; [o'er 
His limbs stretch'd fluttering, and his head droop'd 
The weak, yet still untiring knee that bore ; 
He press'd the hand he held upon his heart — 
It beats no more, but Kaled will not part 
With the cold grasp, but feels, and feels in vain, 
For that faint throb which answers not again. 
"It beats!" — away, thou dreamer! he is gone — 
It once was Lara which thou look'st upon. 
30 



He gazed, as if not yet had pass'd away 
The haughty spirit of that huml)le clny ; 
And those around have roused him from his trance. 
But cannot tear from thence his fixed glance ; 
And when, in raising him from where he bore 
Within his arms the form that felt no more. 
He saw the head his breast would still sustain. 
Roll down like earth to earth upon the plain ; 
He did not dash himself thereljy, nor tear 
The glossy tendrils of his raven hair. 
But strove to stand and gaze, but recl'd and fell. 
Scarce breathing more than that he loved so well — 
Than that ht loved ! Oh ! never yet beneath 
The breast of man such trusty love may breathe. 
That trying moment hath at once revealed 
The secret long and yet but half-concealed ; 
In baring to revive that lifeless breast. 
Its grief seem'd ended, but the sex confess'd ; 
And life return'd, and Kaled felt no shame — 
What now to her was womanhood or fame? 

And Lara sleeps not where his fathers sleep. 
But where he died his grave was dug as deep ; 
Nor is his mortal slumber less profound. 
Though priest nor bless'd nor marble deck'd the 

mound ; 
And he was mourn'd by one whose quiet grief. 
Less loud, outlasts a people's for their chief. 
Vain was all question ask'd her of the past, 
And vain e"en menace — silent to the last; 
She told nor whence, nor why she left behind 
Her all for one who seem'd but little kind. 
Why did she love him 1 Curious fool ! — be still — 
Is human love the growth of human will ] 
To her he might be gentleness ; the stern 
Have deeper thoughts than your dull eyes discern. 
And when they love, your smilers guess not how 
Beats the strong heart, though less the lips avow. 
They were not common links, that form'dthe chain 
That bound to Lara Kaled's heart and l)rain. 
But that wild tale she brook'd not to unfold, 
And seal'd is now each lip that could have told. 
They laid him in the earth, and on his breast. 
Besides the wound that sent his soul to rest, 
They found the scatter'd dints of many a scar, 
M^hich were not planted there in recent war; 
Where'er had pass'd his summer years of life, 
It seems they vanish'd in a land of strife ; 
But all unknown his glory or his guilt, 
These only told that somewhere blood was spilt, 
And Ezzelin, who might have spoke the past, 
Return'd no more — that night appear'd his last. 

Upon that night (a peasant's is the tale) 
A serf that cross'd the intervening vale. 
When Cynthia's light almost gave way to morn, 
And nearly veil'<l in mist her waning horn; 
A serf, that rose betimes to thread the wood. 
And hew the bough that bought his children food, 
Pass'd by the river that divides the plain 
Of Otho's lands and Lara's broad domain : 
He heard a tramp — a horse and horseman broke 
From out the wood — before him was a cloak 
Wrapt round some burden at his saddle-bow, 
Bont was his head, and hidden was his brow. 
Roused by the sudden sight at such a time, 
And some foreboding that it might be crime, 
V 2 



234 



LORD BYRON. 



Himself unheeded watch'd the stranger's course, 
Who reach'd the river, bounded from his horse, 
And hfting thence the burden which he bore, 
Heaved up the bank, and dash'd it from the shore, 
Then paused, and look'd, and turn'd, and seem'd 

to watch, 
And still another hurried glance would snatch, 
And follow with his step the stream that fiow'd, 
As if even yet too much its surface show'd : 
At once he started, stoop'd ; around him strown. 
The winter floods had scatter'd heaps of stone ; 
Of these the heaviest thence he gather'd tliere, 
And slung them with a more than common care. 
Meantime the serf had crept to where unseen 
Himself might safely mark what this might mean. 
He caught a glimpse, as of a floating breast. 
And something glitter'd starlike on the vest, 
But ere he well could mark the buoyant trunk, 
A massy fragment smote it, and it sunk : 
It rose again but indistinct to view. 
And left the waters of a purple hue, 
Then deeply disappear'd : the horseman gazed. 
Till ebb'd the latest eddy it had raised ; 
Then turning, vaulted on his pawing steed. 
And instant spnrr'd him into panting speed. 
His face was mask'd — the features of the dead. 
If dead it were, escap'd the observer's dread; 
But if in sooth a star its bosom bore. 
Such is the badge that knighthood ever wore, 
And such 'tis known Sir Ezzelin had worn 
Upon the night that led to such a morn. 
If thus he perish'd, Heaven receive his soul ! 
His undiscover'd limbs to ocean roll ; 
And charity upon the hope would dwell. 
It was not Lara's hand by which he fell. 

And Kaled — Lara— ^Ezzelin, are gone, 
Alike without their monumental stone ! 
The first, all eflTorts vainly strove to wean [been ; 
From lingering where her chieftain's blood had 
Grief had so tamed a spirit once so proud. 
Her tears were few, lier wailing never loud ; 
But furious would you tear her from the spot 
Where yet she scarce believed that he was not, 
Her eye shot forth with all the living fire 
That haunts the tigress in her whel])less ire; 
But left to waste her weary moments there. 
She talk'd all idly unto shapes of air, 
Such as the busy brain of sorrow paints. 
And woos to listen to her fond complaints : 
And she would sit beneath the very tree 
Where lay his drooping head upon her knee ; 
And in that posture where she saw him fall. 
His words, his looks, his dying grasp recall ; 
And she had shorn, but saved her raven hair. 
And oft would snatch it from her bosom there, 
And fold, and press it gently to the ground, 
As if she stanch'd anew some phantom's wound. 
Herself would question, and for him reply ; 
Then rising, start, and beckon him to fly 
From some imagined spectre in pursuit : 
Then seat her down upon some linden's root. 
And hide her visage with her meager hand. 
Or trace strange characters along the sand — 
This could not last — she lies by him she loved ; 
Her tale untold — her truth too dearly proved. 



THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNA- 
CHERIB. 

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, 
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; 
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the 

sea. 
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. 

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green. 
That host with their banners at sunset were seen : 
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath 

blown, 
That host on the morrow lay wither'd and strown. 

For the A ngel of Death spread his wings on the blast. 
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd ; 
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill, 
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew 
still. 

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, 
B ut through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride : 
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf. 
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. 

And there lay the rider distorted and pale, 
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail ; 
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, 
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. 

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, 
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal ; 
And the might of the gentile, unsmote by the sword. 
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord ! 



EVENING. 

Ave Maria ! blessed be the hour ! 

The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft 
Have felt that moment in its fullest power 

Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft, 
While swung the deep bell in the distant tower, 

Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, 
And not a breath crept through the rosy air. 
And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with prayer. 

Ave Maria ! 'tis the hour of prayer ! 

Ave Maria ! 'tis the hour of love ! 
Ave Maria ! may our spirits dare 

Look up to thine and to thy Son's above ! 
Ave Maria ! oh that face so fair ! [dove — 

Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty 
What though 'tis but a pictured image strike — 
That painting is no idol, 'tis too like. 

Sweet hour of twilight I — in the solitude 
Of the pine forest, and the silent shore 

Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood. 
Rooted where once the Adrian wave flow'd o'er, 

To where the last Cesarean fortress stood, 
Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore 

And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me, 

How have I loved the twilight hour and thee ! 



LORD BYRON. 



235 



The shrill cicalas, people of the pine, 

Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, 

Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine. 
And vesper-bell's that rose the boughs along : 

The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line, [throng, 
His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair 

Which learn'd from this example not to fly 

From a true lover, shadow'd my mind's eye. 

Oh Hesperus! thou bringest all good things — 
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer, 

To the young bird the parent's brooding wings. 
The welcome stall to the o'er-labour'd steer ; 

Whate'er of peace about our hearth-stone clings, 
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear. 

Are gather'd round us by thy look of rest ; 

Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast. 

Soft hour ! which wakes the wish and melts the heart 
Of those who sail the seas, on the first day 

When they from their sweet friends are torn apart ; 
Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way. 

As the far beli of vesper makes him start. 
Seeming to weep the dying day's decay ; 

Is this a fancy which our reason scorns 1 

Ah ! surely nothing dies but something mourns ! 



THE FATE OF BEAUTY. 

As rising on its purple wing 
The insect-queen of eastern spring. 
O'er emerald meadows of Kashmeer 
Invites the young pursuer near, 
And leads him on from flower to flower 
A weary chase and wasted hour ; 
Then leaves him, as it soars on high, 
With panting heart and tearful eye : 
So beauty lures the full-grown child, 
With hue as bright, and wing as wild ; 
A chase of idle hopes and fears. 
Begun in folly, closed in tears. 
If won, to equal ills betray'd, 
Wo waits the insect and the maid, 
A life of pain, the loss of peace. 
From infant's play, and man's caprice : 
The lovely toy so fiercely sought 
Hath lost its charm by being caught. 
For every touch that wooed its stay 
Hath brush'd its brightest hues away : 
Till, charm, and hue, and beauty gone, 
'T is left to fly or fall alone. 
With wounded wingr, or bleeding breastj 
Ah ! where shall cither victim rest ] 
Can this vvith faded pinion soar 
From rose to tulip as before ? 
Or beauty, blighted in an hour, 
Find joy within her broken bower 1 
No ! gayer insects fluttering by 
Ne'er droop the wing o'er those that die ; 
And lovelier things have mercy shown 
To every failing but their own ; 
And every wo a tear can claim 
Except an erring sister's shame. 



SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY. 

She walks in beauty, like the night 
Of cloudless climes and starry skies ; 

And all that's best of dark and bright 
Meet in her aspect and her eyes : 

Thus mcllow'd to that tender light 
Which heaven to gaudy day denies. 

One shade the inore, one ray the less. 
Had half-impair'd the nameless grace 

Which waves in every raven tress. 
Or softly lightens o'er her face ; 

Where thoughts serenely sweet express 
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. 

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow. 

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent. 
The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 

But tell of days in goodness spent, 
A mind at peace with all below, 

A heart whose love is innocent ! 



TO MARY. 
\ 

Well ! thou art happy, and I feel 
That I should thus be happy too ; 

For still my heart regards thy weal 
Warmly as it was wont to do. 

Thy husband's bless'd — and 'twill impart 
Some pangs to view his happier lot : 

Bnt let them pass — Oh ! how my heart 
Would hate him, if he loved thee not ! 

When late I saw thy favourite child, 

I thought my jealous heart would break, , 

But when th' unconscious infant smiled, 
I kiss'd it for its mother's sake. 

I kiss'd it, and reprcss'd my sighs, 

Its father in its face to see ; 
But then it had its mother's eyes. 

And they were all to love and me. 

Mary, adieu ! I must away : 

While thou art blest I '11 not repine, 

But near thee I can never stay ; 

My heart would soon again be thine. 

I deem'd that time, I deem'd that pride 
Had quench'd at length my boyish flame, 

Nor knew, till seated by thy side, 

My heart in all, save hope, the same. 

Yet was I calm : I knew the time 

My breast would thrill before thy look ; 

But now to tremble were a crime — 
We met, and not a nerve was shook. 

I saw thee gaze upon my face. 

Yet meet with no confusion there ; 

One only feeling couldst thou trace. 
The sullen calmness of despair. 

Away ! away ! my early dream. 
Remembrance never mjust awake : 

Oh ! where is Lethe's fabled stream 1 
My foolish heart, be still, or break. 



236 



LOKD BYRON. 



OH! SNATCHED AWAY IN BEAUTY'S 
BLOOM. 

Oh ! snatch'cl away in beauty's bloom. 
On thee shall press no ponderous tomb ! 
But on thy turf shall roses rear 
Their leaves, the earliest of the year ; 
And the wild cypress wave in tender gloom : 

And oft by yon blue gushing stream 
Shall sorrow lean her drooping head, 

And feed deep thought with many a dream, 
And lingering pause and lightly tread; 
Fond wretch ! as if her step disturb'd the dead ! 

Away ! we know that tears are vain, 

That death nor heeds nor hears distress : 

Will this unteach us to complain 1 
Or make one mourner weep the less ] 

And thou — who tell'st me to forget. 

Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet. 



MANFRED TO THE SORCERESS. 

From my youth upwards 

My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men, 
Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes ; 
The thirst of their ambition was not mine ; 
The aim of their existence was not mine ; 
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers, 
Made me a stranger; though I wore the form, 
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh. 
For midst the creatures of clay that girded me 

Was there but one who but of her anon. 

I said, with men, and with the thoughts of men, 
I held but slight communion ; but instead, 
My joy was in the wilderness, to breathe 
The difficult air of the iced mountain's top. 
Where the birds dare not build, nor insect's wing 
Flit o'er the herbless granite ; or to plunge 
Into the torrent, and to roll along 
On the swift whirl of the new breaking wave 
Of river, stream, or ocean in their flow. 
In these my early strength exulted ; or 
To follow through the night the moving moon, 
The stars and their development ; or catch 
The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim ; 
Or to look, listening, on the scatter'd leaves. 
While autumn winds were at their evening song. 
These were my pastimes, and to be alone ; 
For if the beings, of whom I was one, — 
Hating to be so, — cross'd me in my path, 
I felt myself degraded back to them. 
And was all clay again. And then I dived, 
In my lone wanderings, to the caves of death, 
Searching its cause in its efiect ; and drew 
From wither'd bones, and skulls, and heap'd-up dust, 
Conclusions most forbidden. Then I pass'd 
The nights of years-in sciences untaught. 
Save in the old time ; and with time and toil, 
And terrible ordeal, and such penance 



As in itself hath power upon the air. 

And spirits that do compass air and earth, 

Space, and the people infinite, I made 

Mine eyes familiar with eternity. 

Such as, before me, did the Magi, and 

He who from out their fountain dwellings raised 

Eros and Anteros, at Gadara, 

As I do thee ; — and with my knowledge grew 

The thirst of knowledge, and the power and joy 

Of this most bright intelligence. 



ON THIS DAY I COMPLETE MY THIR- 
TY-SIXTH YEAR.* 

'T IS time this heart should be unmoved, 

Since others it hath ceased to move ! 
Yet, though I cannot be beloved, 
Still let me love ! 

My days are in the yellow leaf; 

The flowers and fruits of love are gone ; 
The worm, the canker, and the grief 
Are mine alone ! 

The fire that on my bosom preys 

Is lone as some volcanic isle ; 

No torch is kindled at its blaze — 

A funeral pile ! 

The hope, the fear, the jealous care, 

The exalted portion of the pain 
And power of love, I cannot share. 
But wear the chain. 

But 'tis not thus — and 'tis not he7-e — 

Such thoughts would shake my soul, nor now. 
Where glory decks the hero's bier, 
Or binds his brow. 

The sword, the banner, and the field, 
Glory and Greece around me see ! 
The Spartan, borne upon his shield, 
Was not more free. 

Awake ! (not Greece — she is awake !) 

Awake, my spirit ! Think through whom 
Thy life-l)lood tracks its parent lake, 
And then strike home ! 

Tread those reviving passions down. 
Unworthy manhood ! — unto thee 
Indifferent should the smile or frown 
Of beauty be. 

If thou regret'st thy youth, tvhy live ? 

The land of honourable death 
Is here : — up to the field, and give 
Away thy breath ! 

Seek out — less often sought than found — 

A soldier's grave, for thee the best ; 
Then look around, and choose thy ground, 
And take thy rest. 



* Missolonghi, Jan. 22, 1824. 



THOMAS PRINGLE. 



Thomas Pringle was born on the fifth of 
January, 1787, at Blaiklaw, a few miles 
from Kelso, in Scotland, where his father was 
a respectable farmer; and his early years were 
passed amid the pastoral and secluded scenery 
of his native country. An accident, by which 
he was made permanently lame, induced his 
father to send him to the university, and at 
eighteen he commenced his course at Edin- 
burgh, where, after the completion of his edu- 
cation, he was for several years engaged in 
the office of the Commissioners of the Public 
Records. Growing weary of his sedentary em- 
ployment under government, in conjunction 
with Mr. James Cleghorn, he in 1817 esta- 
blished the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, 
which subsequently falling into other hands, 
was styled Blackwood's Magazine, and became 
the most famous periodical of its class in the 
world. An unwillingness to make the work 
a vehicle of personal satire and political con- 
troversy, led to disagreements with his pub- 
lisher, and finally to a transfer of his services 
as editor to Constable's Edinburgh Maga- 
zine, by which he became involved in a literary 
warfare very uncongenial to his disposition. 

In 1819, he published "The Autumnal Ex- 
cursion and other Poems," and having given 
up his engagement with Constable, he pro- 
ceeded in the same year to London, with his 
family and several friends, and embarked for 
South Africa. There he became engaged in 
a contest with the Colonial Governor, Lord 
Charles Somerset, which resulted in his re- 
turn to England, where he arrived on the 
seventh of July, 1826. 



By an article in the " New Monthly Maga- 
zine," then edited by Thomas Campbell, he 
became known to the managers of the Anti- 
slavery Society, who, in 1827, engaged him 
as their secretary, in which capacity he was 
employed until the extinction of slavery in the 
British colonies. In the meantime, he was a 
contributor to different literary magazines, and 
for several years was editor of " Friendship's 
Offering," one of the most popular of the il- 
lustrated annuals. He also wrote his " Afri- 
can Sketches," a series of poems relating to 
that continent, and a " Narrative of a Resi- 
dence in South Africa," both of which were 
published by Moxon, He died on the fifth 
of December, 1834, of a disease induced by 
too earnest devotion to his various pursuits, 
and just before his intended re-embarkation 
for Africa, whither he was going for the res- 
toration of his health. 

Some of Mr. Pringle's poems are very 
spirited, and nearly all of them are smoothly 
and correctly versified ; but relating chiefly to 
the traditions and manners of a country of 
which but little is known ; their peculiar merit 
is not well appreciated, even by educated 
readers. 

Mr. Pringle enjoyed the friendship of 
Sir Walter Scott, Zachary Macaulav, and 
many other eminent authors and philanthro- 
pists; and "although he discharged during 
many years, with a fearless and honest zeal, 
the duties of an office which exposed him to 
the bitterness of party spirit, no man, perhaps, 
had ever fewer enemies, or descended into the 
grave with fewer animosities." 



AFAR IN THE DESERT. 

Afaji in the desert I love to ride, 
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side: 
When the sorrows of life the soul o'crcast, 
And, sick of tlie present, I cluig to the past: 
When the eye is suffused with regretful tears. 
From the fond recollections of former years ; 
And shadows of things that have long since fled 
Flit over the brain, hke the ghosts of the dead : 



Bright visions of glory — that vanish'd too soon ; 
Day-dreams — that departed ere manhood's noon ; 
Attachments — by fate or by falsehood reft; 
Companions of early days — lost or left ; 
And my native land — whose magical name 
Thrills to the heart like electric flame ; 
The home of my childhood ; the haunts of my prime; 
All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time 
When the feelings were young and the world was 

new, 
Like the fresh bowers of Eden unfolding to view ; 

237 



238 



THOMAS PRINGLE. 



All — all now forsaken — forgotten — foregone ! 

And I — a lone exile remembcr'd of none — 

My high aimsabandon'd, — my good acts undone, — 

Aweary of all that is under the sun, — 

With that sadness of heart which no stranger may 

scan, 
I fly to the desert afar from man ! 
Afar in the desert I love to ride. 
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side : 
When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life, 
With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife : 
The proud man's frown, and the base man's fear, — 
The scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear, — 
And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly, 
Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy ; 
When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are high, 
And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh — 
Oh ! then there is freedom, and joy, and pride, 
Afar in the desert alone to ride ! 
There is rapture to vault on the champing steed, 
And to bound away with the eagle's speed, 
With the death-fraught firelock in my hand — 
The only law of the desert land ! 

Afar in the desert I love to ride, 
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side: 
Away — away from the dwellings of men. 
By the wild deer's haunt, by the buffalo's glen ; 
By valleys remote where the oribi plays. 
Where the gnu, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze, 
And the kiidd and eland unhunted recline 
By the skirts of gray forests o'erhung with wild-vine ; 
Where the elephant browses at peace in his wood. 
And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood, 
And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will 
In the fen where the wild-ass is drinking his fill. 

Afar in the desert I love to ride. 
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side : 
O'er the brown Karroo, where the bleating cry 
Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively ; 
And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh 
Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray ; 
Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane, 
With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain ; 
And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste 
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste, 
Hying away to the home of her rest, 
Where she and her mate have scoop'd their nest, 
Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view 
In the pathless depths of the parch'd Karroo. 

Afar in the desert I love to ride, 
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side : 
Away — away — in the wilderness vast, 
Where the white man's foot hath never pass'd, 
And the quiver'd Coranna or Bechuan 
Hath rarely cross'd with his roving clan : 
A region of emptiness, howling and drear. 
Which man hath abandon'd from famine and fear ; 
Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone, 
With the twilight bat from the yawning stone; 
Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root, 
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot ; 
And the bitter-melon, for food and drink, 
Is the pilgrim's fare by the salt lake's brink : 
A region of drought, where no river glides, 
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides ; 



Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount, 
Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount, 
Appears, to refresh the aching eye : 
But the barren earth, and the burning sky. 
And the blank horizon, round and round. 
Spread — void of living sight or sound. 

And here, while the night-winds round me sigh, 
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky, 
As I sit apart by the desert stone, 
Like Elijah at Horeb's cave alone, 
" A still small voice" comes through the wild 
(Like a father consoling his fretful child,) 
Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear, — 
Saying — Man is distant, but God is near ! 



THE BECHUANA BOY. 

I SAT at noontide in my tent. 

And look'd across the desert dun. 
That 'neath the cloudless firmament 

Lay gleaming in the sun, 
When from the bosom of the waste 
A swarthy stripling came in haste. 
With foot unshod and naked limb. 
And a tame springbok following him. 

He came with open aspect bland. 

And modestly before me stood, 
Caressing with a kindly hand 

That fawn of gentle brood ; 
Then, meekly gazing in my face, 
Said in the language of his race. 
With smiling look, yet pensive tone, 
"Stranger, I'm in the world alone!" 

" Poor boy," I said, " thy kindred's home, 
Beyond far Stormberg's ridges blue. 

Why hast thou left so young, to roam 
This desolate Karroo 1" 

The smile forsook him while I spoke ; 

And when again he silence broke. 

It was with many a stifled sigh 

He told this strange, sad history. 

" I have no kindred !" said the boy : 
" The Bergenaars, by night they came, 

And raised their murder-shout of joy. 
While o'er our huts the flame 

Rush'd like a torrent; and their yell 

Peal'd louder as our warriors fell 

In helpless heaps beneath their shot, 

One Uving man they left us not ! 

" The slaughter o'er, they gave the slain 
To feast the foul-beak'd birds of prey ; 
And with our herds across the plain 

They hurried us away — 
The widow'd mothers and their brood : 
Oft, in despair, for drink and food 
We vainly cried, they heeded not. 
But with sharp lash the captives smote. 

" Three days we track'd that dreary wild. 
Where thirst and anguish press'd us sore; 

And many a mother and her child 
Lay down to rise no more : 



THOMAS PRINGLE. 



239 



Behind us, on the desert brown, 
We saw the vultures swooping down ; 
And heard, as the grim Hght was falling. 
The gorged wolf to his comrade calling. 

"At length was heard a river sounding 

Midst that dry and dismal land. 
And, like a troop of wild deer bounding, 

We hurried to its strand ; 
Among the madden'd cattle rushing, 
The crowd behind still forward pushing, 
Till in the flood our limbs were drench'd 
And the fierce rage of thirst was quench'd. 

" Hoarse-roaring, dark, the broad Gareep 

In turbid streams was sweeping fast, 
Huge sea-cows in its eddies deep 

Loud snorting as we pass'd ; 
But that relentless robber clan 
Right through those waters wild and wan 
Drove on like sheep our captive host, 
Nor staid to rescue wretches lost. 

" All shivering from the foaming flood, 

We stood upon the stranger's ground. 
When, with proud looks and gestures rude, 

The white men gather'd round : 
And there, like cattle from the fold. 
By Christians we were bought and sold, — 
Midst laughter loud and looks of scorn, — 
And roughly from each other torn. 

" My mother's scream so long and sVirill, 

My little sister's wailing cry, 
(In dreams I often hear them still !) 

Rose wildly to the sky. 
A tiger's heart came to me then, 
And madly 'mong those ruthless men 
I sprang ! — Alas ! dash'd on the sand, 
Bleeding, they bound me foot and hand. 

" Away — away on bounding steeds 
The white man-stealers fleetly go, 

Through long, low valleys, fringed with reeds, 
O'er mountains capp'd with snow, — 

Each with his captive, far and fast ; 

Until yon rock-bound ridge was pass'd, 

And distant stripes of cultured soil 

Bespoke the land of tears and toil. 

"And tears and toil have been my lot 

Since I the white man's thrall became. 
And sorer griefs I wish forgot — 

Harsh blows and scorn and shame. 
Oh, English chief! thou ne'er canst know 
The injured bondman's bitter wo, 
When round his heart, like scorpions, cling 
Black thoughts, that madden while they sting ! 

" Yet this hard fate I might have borne, 
And taught in time my soul to bend, 



Had my sad yearning breast forlorn 

But found a single friend : 
My race extinct or far removed, 
The boor's rough brood I could have loved — 
But each to whom my liosom turn'd 
Even like a hound the black boy spurn'd ! 

" While, friendless thus, my master's flocks 

I tended on the upland waste. 
It chanced this fawn leapt from the rocks, 

By wolfish wild-dogs chased : 
I rescued it, though wounded sore, 
All dabbled with its mother's gore, 
And nursed it in a cavern wild 
Until it loved me like a child. 

" Gently I nursed it ; for I thought 

(Its hapless fate so like to mine) 
By good Utiko it was brought, 

To bid me not repine — 
Since in this world of wrong and ill 
One creature lived to love me still, 
Although its dark and dazzling eye 
Beam'd not with human sympathy. 

"Thus lived I, a lone orphan lad, 

My task the proud Boor's flocks to tend ; 
And this poor fawn was all I had 

To love, or call my friend ; 
When suddenly, with haughty look 
And taunting words, that tyrant took 
My playmate for his pamper'd boy. 
Who envied me my only joy. 

" High swell'd my heart ! — But when the star 

Of midnight gleam'd, I softly led 
My bounding favourite forth, and far 

Into the desert fled. 
And here, from human kind exiled, 
Three moons on roots and berries wild 
I've fared; and braved the beasts of prey. 
To escape from spoilers worse than they. 

" But yester morn a Bushman brought 

The tidings that thy tents were near; 
And now with hasty foot I've sought 

Thy presence, void of fear ; 
Because they say, O English chief, 
'I'hou scornest not the captive's grief: 
Then let me serve thee, as thine own — 
For I am in the world alone !" 

Such was Marossi's touching tale. 

Our breasts they were not made of stone : 
His words, his winning looks prevail — 

We took him for " our own." 
And one, with woman's gentle art, 
Unlock'd the fountains of his heart ; 
And love gush'd forth — till he became 
Her child in every thing but name. 



WILLIAM PETER. 



William Peter, the descendant of a family 
which has flourislied for many centuries in 
the west of England,* was born in Cornwall, 
educated at Christ-Church, Oxford, and stu- 
died law at Lincoln's Inn. After a few years' 
residence in London, he returned to his native 
shire, settling down at the seat of his fore- 
fathers, and dividing his time between literary 
and domestic pleasures and the discharge of 
those magisterial and other duties attached to 
the life of an English country gentleman. 
Being a zealous whig, however, of the Somers 
and Fox school, he was, at length, induced to 
enter the House of Commons, where, during 
the few years that he continued a member of 
that body, he had the satisfaction of contri- 
buting by his votes to the final triumph of 
many of those great principles and measures, 



in the successful advocacy of which he had, 
by his speeches and writings, long borne a 
leading part in his native county. Since his 
withdrawal from Parliament, he has spent 
two or three years in visiting different coun- 
tries of Europe, and is now Her Britannic 
Majesty's Consul for the State of Pennsylvania. 
Mr. Peter's poetical works consist of 
translations from the German and Italian,* 
scriptural paraphrases, and original pieces. 
His translations are remarkable for their ele- 
gance and fidelity, and all his productions 
for a most scholarly elaboration and finish. 
He is also the author of a " Memoir of Sir 
Samuel Romilly," as well as of several tracts, 
chiefly political, and in support of the princi- 
ples and parly to which he has been through- 
out life attached. 



DAMON AND PYTHIAS.t 

Non certes ; la Vie n'est pas si aride que I'Egoisme 
nous I'a faite ; tout n'y est pas prudence, tout n'y est 
pas calcul. — Mad. de Stael. 

"Here, guards!" pale with fears Dionysius cries, 

<< Here, guards, yon intruder arrest ! 
'Tis Damon — but hah! speak, what means this 
disguise 1 
And the dagger, which gleams in thy vest?" 
" 'T was to free," says the youth, " this dear land 

from its chains !" 
" Free the land ! wretched fool, thou shalt die for 
thy pains." 

" I am ready to die — I ask not to live — 

Yet three days of respite, perhaps, thou may'st give, 

For to-morrow, my sister will wed, [there ; 

And 'twould damp all her joy, were her brother not 
Then let me, I pray, to her nuptials repair, 

Whilst a friend remains here in my stead." 

With a sneer on his brow, and a curse in his breast, 
"Thou shalt have," cries the tyrant, "shalt have 
thy request ; 

To thy sister's repair, on her nuptials attend, 
Enjoy thy three days, but — mark well what I say — 
Return on the third ; if, beyond that fix'd day, 
There be but one hour's, but one moment's delay, 

That delay shall be death to thy friend !" 

* Burke's " Commoners of England." 

■j- Tills an imitation or free version of Schiller's 
" Burgschaft."' — For tlie origin of the story, see Valerius 
Maxiinus, I. iv. c. 7. de Amicitl^; Cic. Off. 1. iii. c. 10; 
and I.actant. 1. v. c. 17. Pythias is called Phintias by 
Valerius Maxinius and Cicero. 



Then to Pythias he went; and he told him his case ; 
That true friend answer'd not, but, with instant 
embrace 
Consenting, rush'd forth to be bound in his 
room ; 
And now, as if wing'd with new life from above, 
To his sister he flew, did his errand of love. 
And, ere a third morning had brighten'd the grove, 
Was returning with joy to his doom. 

But the heavens interpose, 

Stern the tempest arose. 
And, when the poor pilgrim arrived at the shore, 

Swoll'n to torrents, the rills 

Rush'd in foam from the hills. 
And crash went the bridge in the whirlpool's wild 
roar. 

Wildly gazing, despairing, half phrensied he stood ; 
Dark, dark were the skies, and dark was the flood, 

And still darker his lorn heart's emotion ; 
And he shouted for aid, but no aid was at hand, 
No boat ventured forth from the surf-ridden strand, 
And the waves sprang, like woods, o'er the lessen- 
ing land. 

And the stream was becoming an ocean. 

Now with knees low to earth and with hands to 

the skies, 
" Still the storm, God of might, God of mercy !" he 

cries — 



* Amongst these are Schiller's " William Tell," " Mary 
Stuart," the "Maid of Orleans," "Battle with the Dra- 
gon;" Manzoni's " Fifth of May," &c.,&c. 
240 



WILLIAM PETER. 



241 



" Oh hush with thy breath this loud sea ; 
The hours hurry by : the sun glows on high ; 
And should he go down, and I reach not yon town, 

My friend — he must perish for me !" 

Yet the wrath of the torrent still went on increasing, 
And waves upon waves still dissolved without 

ceasing. 
And hour after hour hurried on; 
Then, hy anguish impell'd, hope and fear alike o'er, 
He, reckless, rush'd into the water's deep roar ; 
Rose, sunk, struggled on, till, at length, the 

wish'd shore, — 
Thanks to Heaven's outstretch'd hand — it is 

won ! — 

But new perils await him : scarce 'scaped from the 
flood, 
And intent on redeeming each moment's delay. 
As onward he sped, lo ! from out a dark wood, 

A band of fierce robbers encompass'd his way. 
"What would yel" he cried, "save my life I 

have naught ; 
Nay, that is the king's" — Then swift, having caught 
A club from the nearest, and swinging it round 
With might more than man's, he laid three on the 
ground, 
Whilst the rest hurried off in dismay. 

But the noon's scorching flame 

Soon shoots through his frame, 
And he turns, faint and way-worn, to heaven 
with a sigh — 

" From the flood and the foe 

Thou 'st redeem'd me, and oh ! 
Thus, by thirst overcome, must I effortless lie. 
And leave him, the beloved of my bosom, to die !" 

Scarce utter'd the word, 

When startled he heard 
Pu rling sounds, sweet as silver's, fall fresh on his ear; 

And low a small rill 

Trickled down from the hill ! 
He heard and he saw, and, with joy drawing near. 
Laved his limbs, slaked his thirst, and renew'd his 
career. 

And now the sun's beams through the deep boughs 

are glowing, 
And rock, tree, and mountain their shadows are 
throwing, 
Huge and grim, o'er the meadow's bright bloom ; 
And two travellers are seen coming forth on their 

way. 
And, just as they pass, he hears one of them say — 
"'Tis the hour that was fix'd for his doom." 

Still, anguish gives strength to his wavering flight ; 
On he speeds; and lo now ! in eve's reddening light 

The domes of far Syracuse blend ; — [gi'ay 

There Philostratus meets him, (a servant grown 
In his house,) crying: "Back! not a moment's 
delay ; 

No cares will avail for thy friend. 

" No ; nothing can save his dear head from the tomb ; 

So think of preserving thine own. 
Myself, I beheld him led forth to his doom ; 

Ere this, his brave spirit has flown. 
31 



With confident soul he stood, hour after hour, 

Thy return never doubting to see ; 
No sneers of the tyrant that faith could o'erpower 

Or shake his assurance in thee !" 

" And is it too late 1 and cannot I save [grave ! 
His dear life? then, at least, let me share in his 
Yes, death shall unite us ! no tyrant shall say. 
That friend to his friend proved untrue ; he may 

slay. 
May torture, may mock at all mercy and ruth, 
B ut ne'er shall he doubt of our friendship and truth." 

'Tis sunset; and Damon arrives at the gate. 
Sees the scaffold and multitudes gazing below ; 

Already the victim is bared for his fate, 

Already the deathsman stands arm'd for the blow ; 

When hark ! a wild voice, which is echo'd around, 

"Stay! — 'tis I — it is Damon, for whom ho was 
bound !" 

And now they sink into each other's embrace, 
And are weepiiig for joy and despair. [case; 

Not a soul, amongst thousands, but melts at their 
Which swift to the monarch they bear; 

Even he, too, is moved — feels for once as he ought — 

And commands, that they both to his throne shall 
be brought. 

Then, — alternately gazing on each gallant youth 

With looks of awe, wonder, and shame — 
" Ye have conquer'd," he cries. " Yes, I see now 
that truth. 

That friendship, is not a mere name. 
Go: you're free; but, whilst life's dearest bless- 
ings you prove. 

Let one prayer of your monarch be heard, 
That — his past sins forgot — in this union of love 

And of virtue — you make hirii the third." 



THECKLA. 

Pie Blume ist hinwes ans nieinem Leben, 
Und kalt unci farblos seh' ich's vor iiiir liegen. 

The clouds gather fast, the oak forests moan, 

A maiden goes forth hy the dark sea alone. 

The wave on the shore breaks with might, with 

might. 
And she mingles her sighs with gloomy night, 

Whilst her eyes are ail tearfully roving. 
" My heart, it is dead, and the world 's void and drear 
And there's nothing to hope or to live for here. 
Thou Holy One, call back thy child to her rest ; 
In the pleasure of earth I've already been blest, — 

In the pleasure of living and loving!" 

Vain, vain thy regrets, vain the tears that are shed 
O'er the tomb ; no complaints will awaken the dead; 
Yet oh ! if there's aught to the desolate heart. 
For the lost light of love can a solace impart, — 

It will not be denied thee by heaven. 
" Let the soul then sigh on, its tears gently fall ; 
Though life, love, and rapture, they cannot recall, 
Yet the sweetest of balms to the desolate breast. 
For the lost love of Him, whom on earth it loved 
best, — 

Are the pangs to his memory given." 
X 



242 



WILLIAM PETER. 



THE IDEAL.* 

Pcrfi Ja sed, qiiamvis perlida, chrirn tanieii. 

Thou, and wilt thou for ever leave me 

With thy bright smiles, with thy sweet sighs, 
Ami (liJst thou come hut to deceive me, 

With all thy tender phantasies ? 
Can naujfht detain, naught overcome thee, 

O golden season of life's glee 1 
In vain ! Thy waves are sweeping from me 

Into eternity's dark sea. 

The sun-smiles, the fresh bloom'? have perish'd, 

That bright around my morntide shone, 
And all within this heart most chcrish'd, 

Life's sweet Ideal — all is goue. 
The fair}^ visions, the gay creatures. 

To which my trusting soul gave birth, 
Stern reason dims their angel-features. 

And heaven is lost in clouds of earth. 

As erst, with fiercest, tenderest anguish 

Pygmalion clasp'd the senseless stone. 
And taught the death-cold breast to languish 

With blooJ, pulse, transports, as his own ; 
Thus I, around my heart's dear treasure. 

Round nature, twined my wooing arms, 
Till, giving back the throb of pleasure, 

She glow'd, — alive in all her charms. 

Then, then with mutual instinct burning, 

The dumb caught raptures from my tongue, 
And, kiss with sweetest kiss returning, 

Responsive to her minstrel rung : 
With fdls more musical the fountain, 

With brighter hues, tree, flower were rife, 
The soulless breath'd from lake and mountain, 

And all was echo of my life. 

My hark, with wider sails unmooring 

Stretch'd boldly forth o'er depths unknown. 
With eager prow life's coasts exploring, 

Her realms of thought, sight, feeling, tone. 
How vast the world then, how elysian 

Its prospects, in dim distance seen ! 
How faded now, — on nearer vision 

How small, — and oh ! that small, how mean ! 

With soul, by worldling cai-c unblighted, 

With brow, unblench'd by fear or shame, 
How sprang — on wings of hope delighted — 

Young manhood to the lists of fame ! 
Far, far beyond earth's cold dominions, 

High, high as light's exultant sphere, 
No realms too distant for his pinions. 

No worlds too bright for his career. 

How swift the car of rapture bore him, 

(No toils seem'd hard, no wishes vain.) 
How light, how gladsome, danced before him 

Imagination's sparkling train ! 
.High Truth, in sun-bright morion glancing, 

Young Glory, wrth his laurcH'd sword, 
Fortune, on golden wheels advancing, 

And true Love, with its sweet reward. 

* A free version of Schiller's "Die Ideale." 



But ah ! as ocean's breast, unsteady, 

The.se visions fade, these joys decay. 
And, faithless, from my path already. 

Friend after friend, they 've dropp'd away. 
False Fortune hails some happier master, 

The thirst of Lore survives my youth. 
But doubt's chill clouds are gathering faster 

Around the sunny form of Truth. 

I saw the holy crown of Glory 

Polluted on the vulgar brow ; 
Anil Love — ah, why so transitory 1 

E'en Love's sweet flowers are withering now ; 
And dimmer all around, and dimmer, 

Fades on the sense life's vvcst'ring ray, 
Till Hope herself scarce leaves a glimmer 

To light the pilgrim on his way. 

Of all, — the crowd, — that once were near me. 

To court, soothe, flatter, shout, carouse, 
Who now is left ! Wiio comes to cheer me. 

Or follow to my last dark house 1 
Thou, Friendship I gentlest nurse, that bearest 

Balm for all wounds, all woes around. 
Who, patient, every burden sharest — 

Mine earliest sought and latest found. 

And thou, with Friendship still uniting. 

Exorcist of the stormy soul. 
Employment, «// its powers exciting. 

Though weakening none, by thy control ! 
Who, grain on grain, with fond endeavour, 

Add'st to eternity's vast day. 
Yet from Time's debt, unwearied ever. 

Art striking weeks, months, years, away. 



CHRISTIAN LOVE. 

Though Cowper's zeal, though Milton's fire 

Inspired my glowing tongue ; 
Though holier raptures woke my lyre, 

Than ever Seraph sung ; 
Though faith, though knowledge from above 

Mine ardent labours crown'd ; 
Did I not glow with Christian love, 

'T were all but empty sound. 

Love suffers long ; is just, sincere. 

Forgiving, slow to blame ; 
Friend of the good, she grieves to hear 

An erring brother's shame. 
Meek, holy, free from selfish zeal, 

To generous pity prone. 
She envies not another's weal. 

Nor triumphs in her own. 

No evil, no suspicious thought 

She harbours in her breast ; 
She tries us by the deeds we've wrought, 

And still believes the best. 
Love never fails ; though knowledge cease. 

Though prophecies decay. 
Love, Christian love, shall still increase. 

Shall still extend her sway. 



WILLIAM PETER. 



243 



THE PENITENT. 

With guilt and slianic opprcst, 

Where shall I turn for rest, 
Where look for timely succour from despair T 

I try the world in vain. 

I court earth's fluttering train, 
But find, alas ! no hope, no consolation, there. 

Now glory's trumpet-call, 

Now pleasure's crowded hall. 
Now wealth, now grandeur, every thought employs; 

Vain, weary, wasted hours ! 

E'en midst life's fairest flowers 
Fell disappointment lurks and poisons all our joys. 

Then whither shall I fly ? 

To Christ, to God, on high — 
To Him lift up thy soul in contrite prayer ! 

He sees the lowly heart, 

He will His grace impart, 
And e'en to sinners yield a refuge from despair. 



ON A DEAR CHILD. 

"Of such is the kingdom of Goil." 

Flowers for the loved, the lost ! Bring flowers. 

The sweetest of the year ; 
They charm'd him in life's happiest hours, 

And let them strew his bier. 

Meet emblems of a spring, like his, 

That bloom'd but to decay. 
That stole, in dreams of gentle bliss 

And innocence, away. 

We weep, though not in bitterness, 

Ours are not tears of gloom ; 
No thoughts, but those of tenderness, 

Shall glisten round his toml). 

No painful recollections rise — 

His morn — it dawn'd so blest. 
And, ere a cloud had dimm'd its skies, 

Sweet lamb, he was at rest. 

He 's far away ! Yet still I gaze 

Upon his smiling face, 
Still mark his little winning ways, 

His every infant grace : 

I listen for his airy tread, 

His voice I turn to hear, 
Nor knew I, till their sounds had fled, 

That he was half so dear. 

Each scene he loved, — the sandy wild, 

The rocks, the lone-blue sea, — 
The birds, the flowers, on which he smiled, — 

Shall long be dear to me. 



Oh, had I been beside his bed, 

But one sal kiss to share. 
To soothe, perchance, his throbbing head. 

To hear his heart's meek prayer. 

To press his little grateful hand, 

To watch his patient breath. 
And gaze upon that smile, so bland, 

So beautiful, in death. 

But these are past. And why, my child, 

Should I lament thy doom 1 
Thou wert a ])lant, too rare, too mild, 

On earth's bleak wastes to bloom. 

Oh, why should we disturb thy bliss, 

(For such thy lot must be) 
Why wish thee in a world like this, 

From one, that's worthy thee 1 



TWYDEE. 

Go, roam througn this isle ; view her oak-bosom'd 
towers, 
View the scenes which her Stowes and her 
Blenheims impart; 
See lawns, where proud wealth has exhausted its 
powers. 
And nature is lost in the mazes of art ; 
Far fairer to me 
Are the shades of Twydee, 
With her rocks, and her floods, and her wild- 
blossom'd bowers. 

Here mountain on mountain exultingly throws 
Through storm, mist, and snow, its bleak crags 
to the sky ; 
In their shadow the sweets of the valley repose. 
While streams, gay with verdure and sunshine, 
steal by ; 

Here bright hollies bloom 
Through the steep thicket's gloom. 
And the rocks wave with woodbine, and hawthorn, 
and rose. 

'T is eve ; and the sun faintly glows in the west. 

But thy flowers, fading Skyrrid, arc fragrant with 

dew. 

And the Usk, like a spangle in nature's dark vest, 

Breaks, in gleams of far moonlight, more soft on 

the view ; 

By valley and hill 
All is lovely and still, 
And we linger, as lost, in some isle of the blest. 

Oh, how happy the man who, from fashion's cold ray, 
Flies to shades, sweet as these, with the one he 
loves best ! 
With the smiles of affection to gladden their day, 
And the nightintrale's vespers to lull them to rest; 
While the torments of life, 
Its ambition and strife. 
Pass, like storms heard at distance, unheeded away. 



RANN KENNEDY. 



Mr. Kennedy is a clergyman of the Esta- 
blished Church, holding- an important station 
in Birming-ham, where his high intellectual 
qualities and deep earnestness of feeling at- 
tach to him the hearts of all who know him. 
He has been already introduced to American 
readers, by Washington Irving's happy quo- 
tations from some of his poems in the " Sketch 
Book." Mr. Kennedy also wrote and pub- 
lished, in 1837, a " Tribute in Verse to the 

DOMESTIC BLISS. 

Through each gradation, from the castled hall, 
The city dome, the villa crown'd with shade, 
But chief from modest mansions numberless, 
In town or hamlet, sheltering middle life, 
Down to the cottaged vale, and straw-roof 'd shed, 
Our Western Isle hath long been famed for scenes 
Where bliss domestic finds a dwelling-place ; 
Domestic bliss, that, like a harmless dove, 
(Honour and sweet endearment keeping guard,) 
Can centre in a little quiet nest 
All that desire would fly for through the earth ; 
That can, the world eluding, be itself 
A world enjoy'd ; that wants no witnesses 
But its own sharers, and approving Heaven ; 
That, like a flower deep hid in rocky cleft. 
Smiles, though 'tis looking onlj' at the sky ; 
Or, if it dwell where cultured grandevir shines. 
And that which gives it being, high and bright. 
Allures all eyes, yet its delight is drawn 
From its own attributes and powers of growth — 
Affections fair that blossom on its stem, 
Kissing each other, and from cherish'd hope 
Of lovely shoots, to multiply itself. 



THE MERRY BELLS OF ENGLAND. 

You hear, as I, the merry bells of England : 
Can any country of the same extent 
Boast of so many 1 — in their size and tone 
Differing, yet all for harmonies combined : [cities, 
Cluster'd, in frequent bands, through towns and 
Lodgment they find in many a village tower 
And tapering spire, that crowns an upland lawn. 
Or peeps from grove and dell ; while now and then. 
Modest and low, a steeple ivy-clad. 
Behind a rock, reveals its whereabout 
To the lone traveller, only by their tongue. 
Art's work they are, yet in their tendency. 
Somewhat like nature to the human soul, [both ; 
Raised up 'twixt earth and heaven, they speak of 
They speak to all of duty and of hope — 
They speak of sorrow, and of sorrow's cure. 
244 



Character of the late George Canning ;" and 
in 1840, his chief production, a volume from 
the press of Saunders and Otley, embracing 
" Britain's Genius ; a Mask on occasion of the 
Marriage of Victoria," and a lyrical poem, 
"The Reign of Youth." The last illustrates 
the passions of youth as they successively 
arise. Wonder is succeeded by Mirth ; Hope 
arises in the disappointment of Imagination, 
and Love succeeds to Ambition. 



'Tis happy for a land and for its people. 
When the full spirits of the young and old 
Shall thus flow out in artlessness of sport. 
Waters, long pent, may svvell to monstrous danger, 
Sullen and still, with deluge in their power. 
Far otherwise 't will be, when timely vents 
Give them to run in many a babbling rill 
Through vales or down the rocks, and then disperse, 
Yet leave a green effect on laughing fields — 
Still more and more we hear those pealing bells — 
How true in tone they are ! 

Sweet bells, oft heard, and most, if their discourse 
Shall meet life's daily ear, act wholesomely 
Upon life's daily mind. 



AMBITION. 

Yet these are but a herald band — 
The created chieftain is himself at hand ; 

These shall but wait 

On his heroic state, 
And act at his command. 
He comes ! — Ambition comes ; his way prepare ! — 

Let banners wave in air. 
And loud-voiced trumpets his approach declare ! 

He comes ! — for glory has before him raised 

Her shield, with godlike deeds emblazed. 
He comes, he comes ! — for purposes sublime 

Dilate his soul ; and his exulting eye 
Beams like a sun, that, in the vernal prime, 

With golden promise travels up the sky. 
Onward looking, far and high. 

While before his champion pride 

Valleys rise, and hills subside, 
His mighty thoughts, too swift for lagging time, 

Through countless triumphs run; 
Each deed conceived, appears already done. 

Foes are vanquish'd, fields are won. 
E'en now, with wreaths immortal crown'd. 

He marches to the sound 

Of gratulating lyres, [fires. 

And earth's applauding shout his generous bosom 

He comes, he comes! — his way prepare ! 
Let banners wave in air. 

And loud-voiced trumpets his approach declare ! 



JOHN WILSON. 



Professor Wilson, the " Christopher 
North" of Blackwood, and altogether one of 
the most remarkable men of our age, was 
born at Paisley, in Scotland, in May, 1789. 
On completing his preparatory studies at Glas- 
gow, he entered Magdalen College, Oxford, 
where he soon distinguished himself, and ob- 
tained the prize for English poetry against a 
numerous and powerful competition. His edu- 
cation finished, he purchased a beautiful estate 
on the borders of the Winandermere, where he 
resided until called to the chair of Moral Philo- 
sophy, in the University of Edinburgh, in 1820. 

He had already established on a firm basis 
his reputation as a poet, by the publication of 
The Isle of Palms, written in his eighteenth 
j'ear, and a work of still higher merit, The 
City of the Plague, which appeared in 1816. 
The Isle of Palms is the story of two lovers, 
wrecked on an island of the Indian seas, 
where they remain seven years, at the end of 
which time they are discovered and carried 
home to England. It is full of splendid de- 
scriptions of nature and of feeling. The City 
of the Plague is founded on the history of the 
great plague in London. It is referred to by 
Lord Byron in the preface to The Doge of 
Venice, as one of the very few evidences that 
dramatic power was not then extinct in Eng- 
land. Without a doubt it is the best of Wil- 
son's poems, and one of the first productions 
of the sort which the century has furnished. 

Wilson is most successful as a descriptive 
poet. His fancy is somewhat too exuberant, 
his metaphors too profuse : but they are from 
life and nature, and not from the elder bards. 
He has great delicacy of sentiment, and some 
of his delineations of character are not sur- 
passed in English poetry. His morality is never 
hesitating or questionable. In all his works 
there is no sentiment of doubtful application. 

Since his election to the Professorship of 
Philosophy, W^ilson has writteft little poetry, 
but in his prose tales. The trials of Margaret 
Lindsay, The Foresters, and the admirable 
Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, he has 
shown the genius of which in an earlier period 
his poetical writings gave assurance. His 



reputation, however, rests less upon these 
works than upon his contributions to Black- 
wood's Magazine, of which he has been editor 
from nearly its commencement. His critical 
and miscellaneous essays in Blackwood have 
recently been collected and published by Carey 
and Hart, who have likewise issued an edition 
of that most remarkable series of papers that 
ever appeared in any periodical. The Nodes Am- 
brosianae. It is difficult to describe these Noctes. 
Tiiey exhibit a genius tiie most versatile in 
English literature. More than any thing else 
they gave the magazine its deserved reputation 
as the first of its class in the world. It is al- 
most unnecessary to say, since they have been 
so universally read, that The Noctes Ambro- 
sianae purport to be dialogues between Chris- 
topher North (Professor Wilson,) The Shep- 
herd (James Hogg,) Sir Morgan O'Doherty 
(the late Dr. Maginn,) and other persons, on 
subjects of popular interest in the months pre- 
ceding the publication of the respective num- 
bers ; that they abound in masterly criticism 
and striking portraitures of character ; that they 
are full of the richest humour, the keenest wit, 
the most biting sarcasm, the deepest pathos, 
and the most profound philosoph}' ; amusing by 
a playful dalliance, and commanding attention 
by high reflections on life and death, the ter- 
rors of conscience and the hope of immortality. 
The works of Professor Wilson reflect the 
man. His colloquial powers are very great, 
and he talks as he writes with a hearty sin- 
cerity and originality that command respect 
and admiration. He has a sound heart, and a 
body, like his mind, of manly proportions, 
robust, and powerful. Few are more fond of 
the sports of the field, of the rod and the gun, 
or use them with more skill. The mountains 
and lakes of Scotland are as familiar to his 
eye as is his own estate on the Winander- 
mere. He still fills the chair of Philosophy 
at Edinburgh, and from all that I have read, 
or learned in conversation with those who 
know him, he is about as fine a specimen of a 
man as the times can furnish, all the severe 
things he has said of our country to the con- 
trary notwithstanding. 

X 2 245 



246 



JOHN WILSON. 



TO A SLEEPIJSG CHILD. 

Art thou a thing of mortal birth, 
Whose happy home is on our earth 1 
Does human blood with life embue 
Those wandering veins of heavenly blue, 
That stray along thy forehead fair, 
Lost mid a gleam of golden hair .' 
Oh I can that light and airy breath 
Steal from a being doom'd to death ; 
Those features to the grave be sent 
In sleep thus mutely eloquent : 
Or, art thou, what thy form would seem, 
A phantom of a blessed dream ! 

A human shape I feel thou art, 
I feel it at my beating heart, 
Those tremors both of soul and sense 
Awoke by infant innocence ! 
Though dear the forms by fancy wove, 
We love them with a transient love. 
Thoughts from the living world intrud 
Even on her deepest solitude: 
But, lovely child ! thy magic stole 
At once into my inmost soul, 
With feelings as thy beauty fair. 
And left no other vision there. 

To me thy parents are unknown ; 
Glad would they be their child to own ! 
And well they must have loved before, 
If since thy birth they loved not more. 
Thou art a branch of noble stem, 
And, seeing thee, I figure them. 
What many a childless one would give. 
If thou in their still home wouldst live ! 
Though in thy face no family line 
Might sweetly say, '.' This babe is mine !" 
In time thou wouldst become the same 
As their own child, — all but the name ! 

How happy must thy parents be 
Who daily live in sight of thee ! 
Whose hearts no greater pleasure seek 
Than see thee smile, and hear thee speak, 
And feel all natural griefs beguiled 
By thee, their fond, their duteous child. 
What joy must in their souls have stirr'd 
When thy first broken words were heard, 
Words, that, inspired by heaven, express'd 
The transports dancing in thy breast ! 
And for thy smile! — thy lip, cheek, brow. 
Even while I gaze, are kindling now. 

I call'd thee duteous ; am I wrong 1 
No ! truth, I feel, is in my song : 
Duteous thy heart's still beatings move 
To God, to nature, and to love ! 
To God ! — for thou a harmless child 
Has kept his temple undefiled : 
To nature ! — for thy tears and sighs 
Obey alone her mysteries : 
To love ! — for fiends of hate might see 
Thou dwell'st in love, and love in thee ! 
What wonder then, though in thy dreams 
Thy face with mystic meaning beams ! 

Oh ! that my spirit's eye could see 
Whence burst those gleams of ecstasy : 
That light of dreaming soul appears 



To play from thoughts above thy years. 
Thou smilest as if thy soul were soaring 
To heaven, and heaven's God adoring ! 
And who can tell what visions high 
May bless an infant's sleeping eye 1 
What brighter throne can brightness find 
To reign on than an infant's mind. 
Ere sin destroy, or error dim, 
The glory of the seraphim l 

But now thy changing smiles express 
Intelligible happiness. 
I feel my soul thy soul partake. 
What grief! if thou shouldst now awake ! 
With infants happy as thyself 
I see thee bound, a playful elf ; 
I see thou art a darling child 
Among thy playmates, hold and wild. 
They love thee well ; thou art the queen 
Of all their sportij, in bower or green ; 
And if thou livest to woman's height. 
In thee will friendship, love, delight. 

And live thou surely must; thy life 
Is far too spiritual for the strife 
Of mortal pain, nor could disease 
Find heart to prey on smiles like these. 
Oh ! thou wilt be an angel bright ! 
To those thou lovest, a saving light ! 
The start' of age, the help sublime 
Of erring youth, and stubborn prime; 
And when thou goest to heaven again, 
Thy vanishing be like the strain 
Of airy harp, so soft the tone 
The ear scarce knows when it is gone ! 

Thrice blessed he ! whose stars design 
His spirit pure to lean on thine ; 
And watchful share, for days and years. 
Thy sorrows, joys, sighs, smiles, and tears ! 
For good and guiltless as thou art. 
Some transient griefs will touch thy heart. 
Griefs that along thy alter'd face 
Will breathe a more subduing grace. 
Than even those looks of joy that lie 
On the soft cheek of infancy. 
Though looks, God knows, are cradled there, 
That guilt might cleanse, or sooth despair. 

Oh ! vision fair ! that I could be 
Again, as young, as pure as thee ! 
Vain wish ! the rainbow's radiant form 
May view, but cannot brave the storm ; 
Years can liedim the gorgeous dyes 
That paint the bird of paradise. 
And years, so fate hath ordcr'd, roll 
Clouds o'er the summer of the soul. 
Yet, sometimes, sudden sights of grace. 
Such as the gladness of thy face, 
O sinless babe ! by God are given 
To charm the wanderer back to heaven. 

No common impulse hath me led 
To this green spot, thy quiet bed. 
Where, by mere gladness overcome, 
In sleep thou dreamest of thy home. 
When to the lake I would have gone, 
A wondrous beauty drew me on. 
Such beauty as the spirit sees 
In glittering fields, and moveless trees, 



JOHN WILSON. 



247 



After a warm and silent shower, 
Ere falls on earth the twilight hour. 
What led ine hither, all can say, 
Who, knowing God, his will obey. 

Thy slumbers now cannot be long : 
Thy little dreams become too strong 
For sleep — too like realities : 
Soon shall I see those hidden eyes ! 
Thou wakest, and, starting from the ground, 
In dear amazement look'st around; 
Like one who, little given to roam, 
Wonders to find herself from home ! 
But when a stranger meets thy view, 
Glistens thine eye with wilder hue. 
A moment's thought who I may be, 
Blends with thy smiles of courtesy. 

Fair was that face as break of dawn. 
When o'er its beauty sleep was drawn, 
Like a thin veil that half-conceal'd 
'i'he light of soul, and half-reveal'd. 
While thy hush'd heart with visions wrought. 
Each trembling eye-lash moved with thought. 
And things we dream, but ne'er can speak. 
Like clouds came floating o'er thy cheek. 
Such summer-clouds as travel light. 
When the soul's heaven lies calm and bright ; 
Till thou awokest, — then to thine eye 
Thy whole heart leapt in ecstasy ! 

And lovely is that heart of thine. 
Or sure t'.iese eyes could never shine 
With such a wild, yet bashful glee, 
Gay, half-o'ercome timidity ! 
Nature has breathed into thy face 
A spirit of unconscious grace ; 
A spirit that lies never still, 
And makes thee joyous 'gainst thy will. 
As, sometimes o'er a sleeping lake 
Soft airs a gentle rippling make. 
Till, ere we know, the strangers fly, 
And water blends again with sky. 

O happy sprite! didst thou but know 
What pleasures through my being flow 
From thy soft e3'es ! a holier feeling 
From their blue light could ne'er be stealing ; 
Cut thou wouldst be more loth to part. 
And give me more of that glad heart! 
0!) ! gone thou art ! and hearest hence 
The glory of thy innocence. 
But with deep joy I breathe the air 
That ki.-is'd thy cheek, and fann'd thy hair. 
And feel, though fate our lives must sever, 
Yet shall thy image live for ever ! 

THE THREE SEASONS OF LOVE. 

With laughter swimming in thine eye, 
That told youth's heartfelt revelry ! 
And motion changeful as the wing 
Of swallow waken'd by the spring; 
With accents blithe as voice of May, 
(Chanting glad nature's roundelay ; 
Circled by joy like planet bright 
That smiles mid wreaths of dewy light, — 
Thy image such, in former time. 
When thou, just entering on thy prime, 



And woman's sense in thee combined 
Gently with childhood's simplest mind. 
First taught'st my sighing soul to move 
With hope towards the heaven of love ! 

Now years have given my Mary's face 
A thoughtful and a quiet grace ; — 
Though happy still — yet chance distress 
Hath left a pensive loveliness ! 
Fancy hath tamed her fairy gleams. 
And thy heart broods o'er home-born dreams ! 
Thy smiles, slow-kindling now and mild, 
Shower blessings on a darling child ; 
Thy motion slow, and soft thy tread. 
As if round thy hush'd infant's bed I 
And when thou speak'st, thy melting tone, 
That tells thy heart is all my own. 
Sounds sweeter, from the lapse of years. 
With the wife's love, the mother's fears ! 

By thy glad youth, and tranquil prime 
Assured, I smile at hoary time ! 
For thou art doom'd in age to know 
The calm that wisdom steals from wo ; 
The holy pride of high intent, 
Tiie glory of a life well spent. 
When earth's affections nearly o'er 
With peace behind, and ftith before, 
Thou rendercsl up again to God, 
Untarnish'd by its frail abode. 
Thy lustrous soul, — then harp and hyinn. 
From bands of sister seraphim. 
Asleep will lay thee, till thine eye 
Open in inunortality ! 



THE HUNTER. 

Hirwi life of a hunter ! — he meets, on the hill. 
The new-waken'd daylight, so bright and so still; 
And feels, as the clouds of the morning unroll, 
The silence, the splendour, ennoble his soul ! 
'Tis his on the mountains to stalk like a ghost, 
Enshrouded in mist, in which nature is lost; 
Till he hfts up his eyes, and flood, valley , and height, 
In one moment, all swim in an ocean of light, — 
While the sun, like a glorious banner unfurl'd. 
Seems to wave o'er a new, more magnificent world ! 
'Tis his, by the mouth of some cavern his seat, 
The lightning of heaven to see at his feet, — 
While the thunder below him, that growls from the 

cloud. 
To him comes in echo more awfully loud. 
When the clear depth of noontide, with glittering 

motion, 
O'erflovvs the lone glens — an aerial ocean, — 
When the earth and the heavens, in union profound, 
Lie blended in beauty that knows not a sound, — 
As his eyes in the sunshiny solitude close, 
Neath a rock of the desert in dreaming repose, — 
He sees in his slumbers such visions of old 
.\s wild Gaelic songs to his infancy told ; 
O'er the mountains a thousand plumed hunters are 

borne, — 
And he starts from his dream, at the blast of the 

horn ! 



J 



348 



JOHN WILSON. 



SIGNS OF THE PLAGUE. 

Wht does the finger, 
Yellow mid the sunshine, on the minster-clock, 
Point at that hour 1 It is most horrible, 
Speaking of midnight in the face of day. 
During the very dead of night it stopp'd. 
Even at the moment when a hundred hearts 
Paused with it suddenly, to beat no more. 
Yet, wherefore should it run its idle round 1 
There is no need that men should count the hours 
Of time, thus standing on eternity. 
It is a death-like image. How can I, 
When round me silent nature speaks of death 
Withstand such monitory impulses 1 
When yet far off I thought upon the plague, 
Sometimes my mother's image struck my soul, 
In unchanged meekness and serenity. 
And all my fears were gone. B nt these green banks, 
With an unwonted flush of flowers o'ergrown. 
Brown, when I left them last, with frequent feet 
From morn till evening hurrying to and fro, 
In mournful beauty seem encompassing 
A still forsaken city of the dead. 

O unrejoicing Sabbath ! not of yore 
Did thy sweet evenings die along the Thames 
Thus silently ! Now every sail is furl'd, 
The oar hath dropt from out the rower's hand, 
And on thou flowest in lifeless majesty, 
River of a desert lately fiU'd with joy ! 
O'er all that mighty wilderness of stone 
The air is clear and cloudless, as at sea 
Above the gliding ship. All fires are dead. 
And not one single wreath of smoke ascends 
Above the stillness of the towers and spires. 
How idly hangs that arch magnificent 
Across the idle river ! Not a speck 
Is seen to move along it. There it hangs, 
Still as a rainbow in the pathless sky, 



THE PLAGUE IN THE CITY. 

Know ye what ye will meet with in the city ? 
Together will ye walk through long, long streets. 
All standing silent as a midnight church. 
You will hear nothing but the brown red grass 
Rustling beneath your feet; the very beating 
Of your own hearts will awe you ; the small voice 
Of that vain bauble, idly counting time. 
Will speak a solemn language in the desert. 
Look up to heaven, and tliere the sultry clouds, 
Still threatening thunder, lower with grim delight. 
As if the spirit of the plague dwelt there, 
Darkenino- the city with the shades of death. 
Know ye that hideous hubbub 1 Hark, far oiT 
A tumult like an echo ! on it comes, 
Weeping and wailing, shrieks and groaning pray'r, 
And, louder than all, outrageous blasphemy. 
The passing storm hath left the silent streets. 
But are these houses near you tenantless 1 
Over your heads from a window, suddenly 
A ghastly face is thrust, and yells of ileath 
With voice not human. Who is he that flies, 
As if a demon dogg'd him on his path ] 



With ragged hair, white face, and bloodshot eyes, 

Raving, he rushes past you ; till he falls. 

As if struck by lighting, down upon the stones, 

Or, in blind madness, dash'd against the wall, 

Sinks backward into stillness. Stand aloof, 

And let the pest's triumphal chariot 

Have open way advancing to the tomb. 

See how he mocks the pomp and pageantry 

Of earthly kings ! a miserable cart, 

Heap'd up with human bodies ; dragg'd along 

By pale steeds, skeleton-anatomies ! 

And onwards urged by a wan, meager wretch, 

Doom'd never to return from the foul pit. 

Whither, with oaths, he drives his load of horror. 

Would you look in 1 Gray hairs and golden tresses, 

Wan shrivell'd cheeks, that have not smiled for years, 

And many a rosy visage smiling still ; 

Bodies in the noisome weeds of beggary wrapt, 

With age decrepit, and wasted to the bone ; 

And youthful frames, august and beautiful, 

In spite of mortal pangs — there lie they all. 

Embraced in ghastliness ! But look not long. 

For happily mid the faces glimmering there. 

The well-known cheek of some beloved friend 

Will meet thy gaze, or some small snow-white hand, 

Bright with the ring that holds her lover's hair, 

THE SHIP. 

And lo ! upon the murmuring waves 

A glorious shape appearing !. 
A broad-wing'd vessel, through the shower 

Of glimmering lustre steering ! 
As if the beauteous ship enjoy'd 

The beauty of the sea. 
She lifteth up her stately head 

And saileth joyfully. 
A lovely path before her lies, 

A lovely path behind ; 
She sails amidst the loveliness 

Like a thing with heart and mind. 
Fit pilgrim through a scene so fair, 

Slowly she beareth on ; 
A glorious phantom of the deep. 

Risen up to meet the moon. 
The moon bids her tenderest radiance fall 

On her wavy streamer and snow-white wings, 
And the quiet voice of the rocking sea 

To cheer the gliding vision sings. 
Oh ! ne'er did sky and water blend 

In such a holy sleep. 
Or bathe in brighter quietude 

A roamer of the deep. 
So far the peaceful soul of heaven 

Hath settled on the sea. 
It seems as if this weight of calm 

Were from eternity. 
O world of waters ! the steadfast earth 

Ne'er lay entranced lik:' thee ! 
Is she a vision wild and bricrht, 
That sails amid the still moonlight 

At the dreaming soul's command 1 
A vessel borne by mamc gales. 
All rigg'd with gossamery sails, 

And bound for fairy-land .' 



JOHN WILSON. 



249 



Ah, no ! — an earthly freight she bears, 
Of joys and sorrows, hopes and fears ; 
And lonely as she seems to be, 
Thus left by herself on the moonlight sea 

In loneliness that rolls, 
She hath a constant company, 
In sleep, or waking revelry. 

Five hundred human souls I 
Since first she sail'd from fair Engfend, 

Three moons her path have cheer'd : 
And another lights her lovelier lamp 

Since the Cape hath disappear'd. 
For an Indian isle she shapes her way 
With constant mind both night and day : 
She seems to hold her home in view 
And sails, as if the path she knew ; 
So calm and stately is her motion 
Across the unfathom'd trackless ocean. 



LINES 



WRITTEN IN A LONELY BURIAL GROUND ON THE NORTHERN 
COAST Of THE HIGHLANDS. 

How mournfully this burial ground 
Sleeps mid old Ocean's solemn sountl, 
Who rolls his bright and sunny waves 
All round these deaf and silent graves! 
The cold wan light that glimmers here. 
The sickly wild-flowers may not cheer ; 
If here, with solitary hum, 
The wandering mountain-bee doth come. 
Mid the pale blossoms short his stay, 
To brighter leaves he booms away. 
The sea-bird, with a wailing sound, 
Alighteth softly on a mound, 
And, like an image, sitting there 
For hours amid the doleful air, 
Seemeth to tell of some dim union. 
Some wild and mystical communion, 
Connecting with his parent sea 
This lonesome, stoneless ceme'try. 

This may not be the burial-place 
Of some extinguish'd kingly race, 
Whose name on earth no longer known 
Hath moulder'd with the mouldering stone. 
That nearest grave, yet brown with mould. 
Seems but one summer-twilight old ; 
Both late and frequ?nt hath the bier 
Been on its mournful visit here, 
And yon green spot of sunny rest 
Is waiting for its destined guest. 

I see no little kirk — no bell 
On Sabbath tinkleth through this dell, 
How beautiful tiiose graves and fair. 
That, lying round the house of prayer, 
Sleep in the shadow of its grace ! 
But death has chosen tbis rueful place 
For his own undivided reign ! 
Anrl nothing tells that e'er again 
The sleepers will forsake their bed — 
Now, and for everlasting dead. 
For hope with memory seems fled ! 

M'ild-screaming bird ! unto the sea 
Winging thy flight reluctantly. 
Slow-floating o'er these grassy tombs, 
32 



So ghost-like, with thy snow-white plumes, 
At once from thy wild shriek I know 
What means tliis place so steep'd in wo ! 
Here, they who perish'd on the deep 
Enjoy at last unrockiug sleep. 
For ocean, from this wrathful breast, 
Flung them into this haven of rest. 
Where shroudless, coffinless, they lie, — 
'Tis the shipwreck'd seaman's cemet'ry. 
Here seamen old, with grizzled locks, 
Shipwreck'd before on desert rocks. 
And by some wandering vessel taken 
From sorrows that seem God-forsaken, 
Home bound, here have met the blast 
That wreck'd them on death's shore at last! 
Old friendless men, who had no tears 
To shed, nor any place for fears 
In hearts by misery fortified, — 
And, without terror, sternly died. 
Here, many a creature, moving bright 
And glorious in full manhood's might, 
Who dared with an untroubled eye 
The tempest brooding in the sky. 
And loved to hear that music rave. 
And danred above the mountain-wave, 
Hath quaked on this terrific strand, — 
All flung like sea-weeds to the land ; 
A whole crew lying side by side, 
Death-dash'd at once in all their pride. 
And here, the bright-hair'd, fair-faced boy, 
MMio took with him all earthly joy 
From one who weeps both night and day 
For her sweet son borne far away. 
Escaped at last the cruel deep. 
In all his beauty lies asleep ; 
While she would yield all hopes of grace 
For one kiss of his pale, cold face ! 
Oh, I could wail in lonely fear, 
For many a woful ghost sits here. 
All weeping with their fixed eyes! 
And what a dismal sound of sighs 
Is mingling with the gentle roar 
Of small waves breaking on the shore ; 
While ocean seems to sport and play 
In mockery of its wretched prey ! 

And lo ! a white-wing'd vessel sails 
In sunshine, gathering all the gales 
Fast-freshening from yon isle of pines. 
That o'er the clear sea waves and shines. 
I turn me to the ghostly crowd. 
All smear'd with dust, without a shroud. 
And silent every blue-swollen lip ! 
Then gazing on the sunny ship. 
And listening to the gladsome cheers 
Of all her thoughtless mariners, 
I seem to hear in every breath 
The hollow under-tones of death. 
Who, all unheard by those who sing. 
Keeps tune with low wild murmuring. 
And points with his lean, bony hand 
To the pale ghosts sitting on this strand, 
Then dives beneath the rushing prow. 
Till on some moonless night of wo 
He drives her shivering from the steep 
Down — down a thousand fathoms deep. 



•250 



JOHN WILSON. 



ADDRESS TO A WILD DEER. 

Magnificent creature ! so stately and bright ! 
In the pride of thy spirit pursuing thy flight ; 
For what hath the child of the desert to dread, 
Wafting up his own mountains that far beaming 

head ; 
Or borne like a whirlwind down on the vale ! — 
Hail ! king of the wild and the beautiful ! — hail ! 
Hail ! idol divine ! — whom nature hath borne 
O'er a hundred hill-tops since the mists of the n:orn, 
Whom the pilgrim lone wandering on mountain 

and moor, 
As the vision glides by him, may blameless adore ; 
For the joy of the happy, the strength of the free, 
Are spread in a garment of glory o'er thee. 
Up ! up to yon clifl! like a king to his throne ! 
O'er the black silent forest piled lofty and lone — 
A throne which the eagle is glad to resign 
Unto footsteps so fleet and so fearless as thine. 
There the bright heather springs up in love of thy 

breast. 
Lo ! the clouds in the depths of the sky are at rest ; 
And the race of the wild winds is o'er on the hill ! 
In the hush of the mountains, ye antlers, lie still ! — 
Though your branches now toss in the storm of 

delight 
Like the arms of the pine on yon shelterless height, 
One moment — thou bright a[)parition — delay ! 
Then melt o'er the crags, like the sun from the day. 

His voyage is o'er — As if struck by a spell. 
He motionless stands in the hush of the dell; 
There softly and slowly sinks down on his breast, 
In the midst of his pastime enamour'd of rest. 
A stream in a clear pool that endeth its race — 
A dancing ray chain'd to one sunshiny place — 
A cloud by the winds to calm solitude driven — 
A hurricane dead in the silence of heaven. 

Fit couch of repose for a pilgrim like thee : 
Magnificent prison enclosing the free ; 
With rock wall-encircled, with precipice crown'd — 
Which, awoke by the sun,thou canst clear at a bound. 
Mid the fern and the heather kind nature doth keep 
One bright spot of green for her favourite's sleep ; 
And close to that covert, as clear to the skies 
Whentheirbluedepths are cloudless, a littlehikelies. 
Where the creature at rest can his image behold. 
Looking up through the radiance, as bright and as 

bold. 
Yes : fierce looks thy nature, e'en hush'd in 

repose — 
In the depths of thy desert regardless of foes, 
Thy bold antlers call on the hunter afar, 
With a haughty defiance to come to the war. 
No outrage is war to a creature like thee ; 
The buglehorn fills thy wild spirit with glee. 
As thou bearest thy neck on the wings of the wind, 
And the laggardly gaze-hound is toiling behind. 
In the beams of thy forehead, that glitter with death, 



In feet that dra wpower from the touch of the heath, — 
In the wide raging torrent that lends thee its roar, — 
In the cliffthat once trod must be trodden no more, — 
Thy trust — mid the dangers that threaten thy reign: 
— But what if the stag on the mountain be slain? 
On the brink of the rock — lo! he standeth at bay, 
Like a victor that falls at the close of the day — 
While the hunter and hound in their terror retreat 
From the death that is spurn'd from his furious feet; 
And his last cry of anger comes back from the skies. 
As nature's fierce son in the wilderness dies. 



LINES WRITTEN IN A HIGHLAND 

GLEN. 

To whom belongs this valley fair, 
That sleeps beneath the filmy air, 

Even like a living thing] 
Silent as infant at the breast, 
Save a still sound that speaks of rest. 

That streamlet's murmuring ! 

The heavens appear to love this vale ; 
Here clouds with scarce-seen motion sail, 

Or mid the silence lie ! 
By the blue arch, this beauteous earth. 
Mid evening's hour of dewy mirth, 

Seems bound unto the sky. 

O that this lovely vale were mine ! 
Then, from glad youth to calm decline, 

My years would gently glide ; 
Hope would rejoice in endless dreams, 
And memory's oft-returning gleams 

By peace be sanctified. 

There would unto my soul be given. 
From presence of that gracious heaven, 

A piety sublime ! 
And thoughts would come of mystic mood. 
To make in this deep solitude 

Eternity of Time ! 

And did I ask to whom belong'd 
This vale ] I feel that I haVe wrong'd 

Nature's most gracious soul! 
She spreads her glories o'er the earth, 
And all her children, from their birth, 

Are joint heirs of the whole ! 

Yea, long as nature's humblest child 
Hatii kept her temple undefiled 

By sinful sacrifice. 
Earth's fairest scenes are all his own ; 
He is a monarch, and His throne 

Is built amid the skies ! 



JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 



Mr. Knowles was born at Cork, about the 
year 1789, His father, a near relative of the 
celebrated Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was 
a popular teacher of elocution in that city. 
Young Knowles was at a very early age placed 
at a school in England, where the bent of his 
genius was shown in his fondness for dramatic 
literature, and his attempts in dramatic com- 
position. His first effort was called The 
Chevalier Grillon. At sixteen he wrote a 
tragedy in five acts, which is still extant, en- 
titled The Spanish Story ; eight years after, the 
tragedy of Hersilia; and in his twenty-sixth 
year his first successful piece. The Gipsy, 
which was performed at VVaterford, with 
Edmund Kean in the character of the hero. 
This was succeeded by Brian Boroighme, 
Caius Gracchus, VMrginius, William Tell, 
Alfred the Great, The Hunchback, The Wife 
of Mantua, The Beggar's Daughter of Bethnal 
Green, The Love Chase, Woman's Wit, The 
Wrecker's Daughter, Love, John di Procida, 
The Maid of Mariendorpt, The Secretary, and 
other plays, all of which have been acted with 
applause in the British and American theatres. 

Although there are many striking and beau- 
tiful passages in the writings of Knowles, 
he is deserving of little praise as a poet. It 
would not be difficult to find a very large 
number of pieces, among the unacted dramas 
of the last ten years, superior to his in every 
quality but effectiveness for the stage. He 
has carefully studied the Elizabethan drama- 



tists ; and endeavoured, not altogether without 
success, to fashion Himself upon the best 
models they produced. His dialogue is spi- 
rited and dramatic, the action of his pieces 
fine, their morality unexceptionable, and the 
sympathy he manifests with human nature 
deep and healthy. But he has incongruously 
blended modern manners, opinions, feelings, 
incidents, and actions, with the antique ; his 
versification is often cnreless and inharmo- 
nious ; and he is deficient in the important 
poetical faculty of constructiveness. Virgi- 
nius. The Hunchback, and some of his other 
pieces, are, however, among the most success- 
ful dramatic compositions of the age, and after 
the making of all abatements, he is the best 
playwright who has written in England dur- 
ing the present century. 

The greatest poet of the world was an actor, 
and Knowles has thought it no disgrace to 
follow so illustrious an example. I remember 
having seen him in one of his own characters 
on the Park stage in New York in 1835, a 
year in which Fanny Butler, in whom Sid- 
dons seemed to live anew, transiently restored 
to the stage the glory of its palmier days. 
As an actor, however, he was never success- 
ful. He still appears occasionally in the 
British theatres ; but probably only in some of 
the less important characters of his own pieces. 

Mr. Knowles is a general favourite in 
society, and is not more respected for his abi- 
lities than for his manly virtues. 



LOVE'S ARTIFICE. 

I SAin it was a wilful, wayward thing, 
And so it is, fantastic and perverse ! 
Which makes its sport of persons and of seasons, 
Takes its own way, no matter right or wrong. 
It is the bee that finds the honey out, 
Where least you dream 'twould seek thenectarous 

store. 
And 'tis an errant masker — this same love — 
That most outlandish, freakish faces wears 
To hide his own ! Looks a proud Spaniard now; 
Now a grave Turk ; hot Ethiopian next ; 
And then phlegmatic Englishman ; and then 
Gay Frenchman; by-and-hy ItaUan, at 
All things a song ; and in another skip, 



Gruff Dutchman ; still is love behind the mask ! 
It is a hypocrite ! looks every way 
But tliat where lie its thoughts ! will openly 
Frown at the thing it smiles in secret on ; 
Shows most like hate, e'en when it most is love ; 
Would fain convince you it is very rock 
When it is water ! ice when it is lire ! 
Is oft its own dupe, like a thorough cheat ; 
Persuades itself 'tis not the thing it is ; 
Holds up its head, pursues its brows, and looks 
Askant, with scornful lip, hugging itself 
That it is high disdain — till suddenly 
It falls on its knees, making most piteous suit 
With hail of tears and hurricane of sighs, 
Calling on heaven and earth for witnesses 
That it is love, true love — nothing but love ! 

251 



252 



JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 



LAST SCENE IN JOHN DI PROCIDA. 

l^fsoUne follows John di Procida and ?iis son, her husband, 
against Messina, of which city her father is governor. .Ss 
the castle falls into the hands of the Liherator, she, un- 
known to either party, reaches the garden, and pauses, 
exhausted, listening to the tumult of the battle.^ 

Iso. Thus far in time — thus far in safety ! Wer't 
Another stride, ere take it, I had dropped. 
The work is going on ! Oh, spare my father — 
Spare him, and deal with me ! Hark ! Massacre 
Has left this quarter free ; within the city 
Holding her gory reigii. She does not riot 
Within the castle yet. He yet may live ! [here? 
Limhs, hold me up. Don't fail me. Who comes 
My father ! — Father ! 

Governor, (entering hastily and ivildly.) 
Whosoe'er thou art, 
Stop not my way ! 

ho. Dost thou not know me 1 

Gov. No ! 
In times like these men know not one another. 
Holding together, they together fall. 
As men in knots do drown. In scattering 
Is chance of safety. Do not hold me, friend. 
Let go. Look to thyself. Let every one 
Look to liimself. He's lost that casts his eye 
Upon another's jeopardy. His own 
Asks all his care. Let go ! — Away ! — Away ! 

Iso. (thrown upon her knees, us he rushes off.) 
He does not know me ! — He's my fother, and 
He does not know me ! He's distracted — mad ! 
Fain would I follow him, hut cannot. No, 
My knees refuse to raise me. 

Fernando, (jnishing in.) Isoline ! 

Iso. (throwing herself into his arms.) 
Fernando ! my Fernando ! true, to death ! 
My hti<;'jand — mine own love ! — I die for joy ! 
And b*as' thee, my Fernando, for my death ! 

[Swoons in his arms. 

Fer. Love! wife! choice pattern of thypartial sex! 
My Isoline ! She's dead ! she's dead ! she's dead ! 

Guiscurdo, (enters, sword drawn.) Fernando ! 

Fer. Here, Guiscardo ! 

Guis. Who is she 
Hangs swooning on thine arm ] Thy bride ] 

Fer. My bride ! 

Guis. And dead 1 

Fer. And dead ! 

Guis. Set down the carrion, then. 
And yield me payment for Martini's death ! 
I want not odds ! I'll fight thee like a man 
For ancient friendship's sake ! 

Fer. Fight me, Guiscardo ! [thy sword. 

Guis, Cast down thy load to earth, and draw 

Fer. Wouldst murder me 1 and if thou wouldst, 
Guiscardo, 
Do it at once ! 

Guis. I'd treat thee like a man. 
Wilt thou not throw thyself thy burden down 
And act like one, or must I wrest it from thee 
To balk thee of excuse ? [Approaching. 

Fer. You touch her not ! 
'Fore her dead body do I throw my life 
That would not save my own ! 

Guis. Have at thee, then! [They Jight, F. falls. 



Andrea, (rushing in.) Hold ! 'tis the son of 

John of Procida ! 
Guis. The son of John of Procida ! 
Fer. Too late ! 
Take her ! preserve from insult — pay all honours — 
For her sake, not for mine, — and lay us side 
By side. I pant for death, and not the life 
Would hold my spirit from rejoining hers. [Dies. 
Enter John of Procida. 
Pro. It is not there ! I came to see his corse, 
But not to smite him. No ! I would not stain 
This day of freedom with the narrow deed 
Of personal vengeance. To the swords of others 
I would have left him, satisfied if they 
The debt exacted that was due to mine. 
But they, intent on their own quarry, mine 
Have suffered to escape, and vengeance, now 
Balked, by its own remissness, of its prey, 
Gnashes the teeth in vain ! 
And. Di Procida ! 

Pro. Ho! Andrea! whatbear'stthouonthy armi 
And. The body of Fernando's wife, although 
If this be death I do mistake its hue ! 

Pro. Who lies upon the ground] the governor? 
And. Thy son, Procida ! She is not dead ! 
Help here ! Hold ofi"! you killed him ! 
Pro. Killed my son ! 

Guis. Strike, John di Procida ! He sided with 
The enemies of Sicily. 

Pro. He did ; 
And he was horn my son ! Live! you did right. 
His father says it. Yet, he was my son ! 
Guis. I knew not that. 
Pro. And had you known it, still 
You had done right — I say it — I — his father ! 
And yet, he was my son I 

Iso. (recovering.) My lord ! my husband ! — 
Fernando ! — draw me closer to thy breast ! 
Hold off! Who art thou? Where's Fernando? Who 
Is that ? 

And. Fernarjflo's father ! 
Iso. So it is ! 
And we are safe ! Are we not, sir ? [reels forward. 
Pro. O, Heaven ! 

Iso. You will not let them murder us ? You 
will not! 
You can't ! else nature has no truth in her, 
And never more be trusted ! Never more ! 
If fathers will not stretch an arm to save 
Their children's throats, let mothers' breasts run dry, 
And infants at the very founts of life 
Be turn'd to stones ! Sir ! father ! where'syour son? 
Ah, you repulse me not! You let me come 
Closer to you. Where's my Fernando, father? 
What! do you draw me to you ? Would you take me 
Into your very bosom ? There then ! 

[Throws her arms about his neck.] Now, 
Fernando, what's to fear? Now, mine own love, 
We shall be happy ! happy ! blessed happy ! 
Why don't you answer me ? Where is he, father ? 
I left him here ! Where I have been I know not, 
I recollect a sickness as of death. 
And now it comes again. My brow grows chill 
And damp — I'll wipe it ! Blood ! what brings it 
here? 



280* 



JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 



253 



Whose blood is this 1 

And. Blood lias been shed to-day. 
No vpsttnent in Messina, but you'll find 
Some trace upon't. 

ho. Where is my husband, sirsi 
Is this Fernando's blood 1 We were together, 
And it was here ! If death did threaten us 
He would be close to me, of his own life 
Making a shield for mine ! Was he alive, 
Were he not here 1 Not here ! he must be dead, 
And this must he his blood ! 

Pro. Remove her, friend ; 
Take and remove her hence. I lack the strength. 
■ Her plight, to mine own added, weighs me down. 
She must not see his body ; 'tis her life 
That I feel fluttering next my breast just now 
As ready to take wing. 'Twere certain deatii 
To look upon him. 

Iso. Qo Andrea.') No, I will not hence ! 
You will murder me. I am safe here — am I not? 
Am I not, father 7 Father ! where's my father ] 
He did not know me ! he did shake me ofl'! 
He fled me ! You are all my father now I 
But there's Fernando, too ! You are not weeping 1 
You are ! don't weep ! I'll dry your eyes for you ! 
The blood again ! 

Pro. We must remove her hence. 
Come with me, child. 

ho. Child ! do you call me child? 
Child ! is a sv\'eet name ! 

Pro. Come, my daughter. 

ho. Daughter ! 
That's sweeter yet than child. Nothing so sweet 
After the name of wife ; but wife's not sweeter 
Than husband. Husband ? That's the sweetest 

name 
Of all ! My husband is your son ! and son — 
There is a sweet name too ! No sweeter name 
Than son ! Do you not think so ? 

Pro. Come. 

ho. I Come ! 
We are going to Fernando. Are we not ? 
Sir, fare-you-well. What's that upon the ground ? 

And. Where? 

ho. There ! You know as well as I ! Stand off! 
[Breaks away. 
Fernando ! my Fernando ! dead ? Ay, dead 
Indeed, when I do call on thee, and thou 
Return'st no answer ! My Fernando ! dead ! 
Ah ! it is well ! Here's silence coming too 
For me, love. I do feel the frost of death 
Biting my limbs, and creeping towards my heart, 
Colder and colder — all will soon be ice. 
'Tis winter ere its time ! but welcome, since 
'Tis shared with you. Fernando. Mercy, Heaven ! 
'Tis kind — 'tis pitiful to suffer me 
On thy dead lips to breathe my life away. [Dies. 

And. Let me conduct thee hence, Procida ! 
Grief doth benumb his every faculty. 

Stephana, (^e n I eri n ir with others.') Where is 
John of Procida? 

And. Behold him. 

Ste. Health 
To thee and to Messina, which, to-day. 
Through thee, beholds her grievous yoke thrown off. 



All Sicily is free I From north to south, 
From east to west she garrisons herself, 
And tyrants rule no more! 

And. Forgive him that 
He heeds you not. 'J'hat body is his son's 
You see him gazing on ! 

.SVe. We know his heart ! 

Tliomns, {entering with others.) Health, John 
of Procida ! The enemy 
That sacked thy castle, and who yesterday 
Hold rule in Sicily, the Governor, 
Flying from death did meet it from this man, 
Who knew him, intercepted him, and slew him. 

And. All enmities, all loves, are swallowed up 
In the deep gulf of sorrow for his son. 

Carlo, {entering with others.) Where is our 
chief? 

And. You see what's left of him. 

Car. The admiral 
And captains of the fleet have disembarked 
To swell the general joy ; and, yonder, come 
Our ancient magistrates, their offices 
Suspended long, resumed to pay their debts 
To John of Procida ! 

Enter Magistrates, ^c. 

Chief M. Di Procida 
The Liberator — so we hail thee — such 
Thy deeds declare thee better than our words, 
F'or us and for our children at our hands. 
Whose act our sovereign master will approve, 
Most poor return take for most rich desert, 
And be the Governor of Sicily ! 
[The whole assembly shout 'and applaud — John 
of Procida weeps.] 

Pro. Forgive me — I'm a father — there's my son! 



THE GROWTH OF LOVE. 

To say he loved, 
Were to affirm what oft his eyes avouch'd, 
What many an action testified — and yet — 
What wanted confirmation of his tongue. 
But if he loved — it brought him not content ! 
'Twas now abstraction — now a start — anon 
A pacing to and fro — anon, a stillness. 
As naught remain'd of life, save life itself. 
And feeling, thought, and motion, were extinct! 
Then all again was action ! Disinclined 
To converse, save he held it with himself; 
Which oft he did, in moody vein discoursing, 
And ever and anon invoking Honour, 
As some high contest there were pending, 'twixt 
Himself and him, wherein her aid he needed. 

— I saw a struggle, 
But knew not what it was. I wonder'd still, 
That what to me was all content, to him 
Was all disturbance; but my turn did come. 
At lenijth he lalk'd of leaving us ; at length, 
He fix'd the parting day — but kept it not — 
O how my heart did bound ! Then first I knew 
It had been sinking. Deeper still it sank 
When next he fix'd to go ; and sank it then 
To bound no more ! He went. 



254 



JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 



ARTIFICE DISOWNED BY LOVE. 

I CAKNOT think love thrives by artifice, 
Or can disguise its mood, and showf its face. 
I would not hide one portion of my heart 
Where I did give it and did feel 'twas right. 
Nor feign a wish, to mask a wish that was, 
Howe'er to keep it. For no cause except 
Myself would I he loved. What were 't to me, 
My lover valued me the more, the more 
He saw me comely in another's eyes. 
When his alone the vision I would show, 
Becoming to ? I have sought the reason oft. 
They paint love as a child, and still have thought 
It was because true love, like infancy, 
Frank, trusting, unobservant of its mood. 
Doth show its wish at once, and means no more ! 



PRIDE OF RANK. 

Descent, 

You'll grant, is not alone nobility. 

Will you not 1 Never yet was line so long, 

But it beginning had : and that was found 

In rarity of nature, giving one 

Advantage over many ; aptitude 

For arms, for counsel, so superlative 

As baffled all competitors, and made 

The many glad to follow him as guide 

Or safeguard ; and with title to endow him, 

For his high honour, or to gain some end 

Supposed propitious to the general weal. 

On those who should descend from him entail'd. 

Not in descent alone, then, lies degree. 

Which from descent to nature may be traced, 

Its proper fount ! And that, which nature did, 

You'll grant she may be like to do again ; 

And in a very peasant, yea, a slave, 

Enlodge the worth that roots the noble tree. 

I trust I seem not bold, to argue so. 



TELL AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 

Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again ! 
I hold to you the hands you first beheld. 
To show they still are free. Methinks I hear 
A spirit in your echoes answer me, 
And bid your tenant welcome to his home 
Again ! O sacred forms, how proud you look ! 
How high you lift your heads into the sky ! 
How huge you are ! how mighty and how free ! 
How do you look, for all your bared brows, 
More gorgeously majestical than kings 
Whose loaded coronets exhaust the mine ! 
Ye are the things that tower, that shine, whose smile 
Makes glad, whose frown is terrible, whose forms, 
Robed or unrobed, do all the impress wear 
Of awe divine, whose subject never kneels 
In mockery, because it is your boast 
To keep him free I Ye guards of liberty, 
I'm with you once again ! — I call to you 
With all my voice ! I hold my hands to you 
To show they still are free ! I rush to you 
As though I could embrace you I 



LOST FREEDOM OF SWITZERLAND. 

Oh ! with what pride I used 
To walk these hills, and look up to my God, 
And bless Him that it was so. It was free— 
From end to end, from clitf to lake 'twas free — 
Free as our torrents are that leap our rocks. 
And plough our valleys, without asking leave ; 
Or as our peaks that wear their caps of snow. 
In very presence of the regal sun ! 
How happy was I in it then ! I loved 
Its very storms ! Yes, Emma, I have sat 
In my boat at night, when, midway o'er the lake, 
The stars went out, and down the mountain gorge 
The wind came roaring — I have sat and eyed 
The thunder breaking from his cloud, and smiled 
To see him shake his lightnings o'er my head. 
And think I had no master save his own ! 
You know the jetting cliff round which a track 
Up hither winds, whose base is but the brow 
To such another one, with scanty room 
For two abreast to pass ] O'ertaken there 
By the mountain blast, I've laid me flat along, 
And while gust follow'd gust more furiously, 
As if to sweep me o'er the horrid brink. 
And I have thought of other lands, whose storms 
Are summer flaws to those of mine, and just 
Have wish'd me there — the thought that mine was 

free 
Has check'd that wish, and I have raised my head, 
And cried in thraldom to that furious wind, 
Blow on ! This is the land of liberty ! 



VIRGINIUS IN THE FORUM, 

IN KEPLY TO A SLAVE WHO CLAIMED TO BE THE 
FATHER OF VIRGINIA. 

— Your answer now, Virginius? 

— Here it is ! 

Is this the daughter of a slave % I know 

'Tis not with men, as shrubs and trees, that by 

The shoot you know the rank and order of 

The stem. Yet who from such a stem would look 

For such a shoot 1 My witnesses are these — 

The relatives and friends of Numitoria, 

Who saw her, ere Virginia's birth, sustain 

The burden which a mother bears, nor feels 

The weight, with longing for the sight of it. 

Here are the ears that listen'd to her sighs 

In nature's hour of labour, which subsides 

In the embrace of joy — the hands, that when 

The day first look'd upon the infant's face. 

And never look'd so pleased, help'd them up to it. 

And bless'd her for a blessing — Here, the eyes 

That saw her lying at the generous 

And sympathetic fount, that at her cry 

Sent forth a stream of liquid living pearl 

To cherish her enamell'd veins. The lie 

Is most unfruitful then, that takes the flower — 

The very flower our bed connubial grew. 

To prove its barrenness ! 

Speak for me, friends ! 
Have I not spoke the truth 1 



MRS. SOUTHEY. 



Caroline Anne Bowles, a sister of the 
Reverend William Lisle Bowles, was born 
near the close of the last century. On 
the fourth of June, 1839, she was married to 
the late Robert Soitthey, poet laureate. 
This is all I know of her personal history. 
She is one of the cleverest women of the time, 
and, besides her poems, has written several 
prose works which have been very popular 
at home and in this country. Her productions 



are distinguished for correctness, simplicity, 
and tenderness. She has little imagination, 
but she has a kindly disposition and an un- 
usual depth of sentiment. Occasionally she 
is playful, but the genius of her poetry is reli- 
gious. The range of her subjects is limited, 
but her writings evince a nice observation, 
a sympathy with the suffering, and a pious 
trustfulness. She has published two volumes 
of poems. The Birth Day , and Autumn Flowers. 



THE WELCOME HOME. 

Hark ! hark! they're come I — those merry bells 
That peal tlieir joyous welcome swells ; 
And many hearts are swelling high, 
With more than joy — with ecstasy ! 

And many an eye is straining now 
Toward that good ship, that sails so slow ; 
And many a look toward the land 
They cast upon that deck who stand. 

Flow, flow, ye tides I — ye languid gales, 
Rise, rise, and fill their flagging sails ! — 
Ye tedious moments, fly, begone, 
And speed the blissful meeting on. 

Impatient watchers ! happy ye, 
Whose hope shall soon be certaint}' ; 
Happy, thrice happy ! soon to strain 
Fond hearts to kindred hearts again ! 

Brothers and sisters — children — mother — 
All, all restored to one another! 
All, all return'd ; — And are there none 
To me restored, return'd ] — Not one. 

Far other meeting mine must be 
With friends long lost — far other sea 
Than thou, O restless ocean I flows 
Between us — one that never knows 

Ebb-tide or flood ; — a stagnant sea ; 
Time's gulf; — its shore eternity ! 
No voyager from that shadowy bourne 
With chart or sounding may return. 

There, there thry stand — the loved ! — the lost ! 
They beckon from that awful coast ! — 
Tlui/ cannot thence return to me, 
But I shall go to them. — I see 

E'en now, mcthinks, those forms so dear, 
Bend smiling to invite me there. 



O, best beloved ! a little while. 
And I obey that beckoning smile ! 

'T is all my comfort now to know 
In God's good time it shall be so ; 
And yet, in that sweet hope's despite 
Sad thoughts oppress my heart to-night. 

And doth the sight of others' gladness 
Oppress the selfish heart with sadness ?- 
Now Heaven forbid I — but tears will rise — 
Unbidden tears — into mine eyes, 

When busy thought contrasts with theirs 
My fate, my feelings. Four brief years 
Have wing'd their flight, since, where they stand, 
I stood, and watch'd that parting band, 

{Then parting hence) — and one, methought, 
(O human foresight! set at nought 
By God's unfathom'd will !) was borne 
From England, never to return ! — 

With sadden'd heart, I turn'd to seek 
Mine own beloved home — to speak 
With her who shared it, of the fears 
She also shared in ... It appears 

But yesterday that thus we spoke; 
And I can see the very look 
With which she said, " I do believe 
Mine eyes have ta'en their last long leave 

Of her who has gone hence to-day !" 
Five months succeeding slipp'd away ; 
And, on the sixth, a deep-toned bell 
Swung slow, of recent death to tell ; 

It toH'd for her, with whom so late 
I reason'd of impending fate ; 
To me those solemn words who spoke 
So late, with that remember'd look ! 

And now, from that same steeple, swells 
A joyous peal of merry bells, 
Her welcome, whose approaching doom 
We blindly thought — a foreign tomb ! 
255 



256 



MRS. SOUTHEY. 



ANGLING. 

My father loved the patient angler's art ; 
And many a summer day, from early morn 
To latest evening, by some streamlet's side 
We two have tarried ; strange companionship ! 
A sad and silent man ; a joyous child. 
Yet were those days, as I recall them now, 
Supremely happy. Silent though he was, 
My father's eyes were often on his child 
Tenderly eloquent — and his few words 
Were kind and gentle. Never angry tone 
Repulsed me, if I broke upon his thoughts 
With childish question. But I learnt at last — 
Learnt intuitively to hold my peace 
When the dark hour was on him, and deep sighs 
Spoke the perturbed spirit — only then 
I crept a little closer to his side, 
And stole my hand in his, or on his arm 
Laid my cheek softly ; till the simple wile 
Won on his sad abstraction, and he turn'd 
With a faint smile, and sigh'd, and shook his head, 
Stooping toward me ; so I reached at last 
Mine arm about his neck, and clasp'd it close, 
Printing his pale brow with a silent kiss. 

That was a lovely brook, by whose green marge 
We two, (the patient angler and his child) 
Loiter'd away so many summer days ! 
A shallow sparkling stream, it hurried now 
Leaping and glancing among large round stones, 
With everlasting friction chafing still 
Their polish'd smoothness ; on a gravelly bed. 
Then softly slipt away with rippling sound, 
Or all inaudible, where the green moss 
Sloped down to meet the clear reflected wave. 
That lipp'd its emerald bank with seeming show 
Of gentle dalliance. In a dark, deep pool 
Collected now, the peaceful waters slept 
Embay 'd by rugged headlands; hollow roots 
Of huge old pollard willows. Anchor'd there 
Rode safe from every gale, a silvan fleet 
Of milk-white water lilies ; every bark 
Worthy as those on his own sacred flood 
To waft the Indian Cupid. Then the stream 
Brawling again o'er pebbly shallows ran, 
On — on, to where a rustic, rough-hewn bridge, 
All bright with mosses and green ivy wreathes, 
Spann'd the small channel with its single arch ; 
And underneath, the bank on either side 
Shelved down into the water darkly green 
With unsunn'd verdure ; or whereon the sun 
Look'd only when his rays at eventide 
Obliquely glanced between the blacken'd piers 
With arrowy beams of orient emerald light 
Touching the river and its velvet marge — 
'Twas there, beneath the archway, just within 
Its rough misshapen piles, I found a cave, 
A little secret cell, one large flat stone 
Its ample floor, embedded deep in moss, 
And a rich tuft of dark blue violet. 
And fretted o'er with curious groining dark, 
Like vault of Gothic chapel was the roof 

Of that small cunning cave Methought 

The little Naiad of our brook might haunt 
That cool retreat, and to her guardian care 



My wont was ever, at the bridge arrived, 

To trust our basket, with its ample store 

Of home-made, wholesome cates ; by one at home 

Provided for our banquet-hour at noon. 

A joyful hour! anticipated keen 
With zest of youthful appetite I trow. 
Full oft expelling unsubstantial thoughts 
Of grots and naiads, sublimated fare — 
The busy, bustling jo}', with housewife airs 
(Directress, handmaid, lady of the feast!) 
To spread that " table in the wilderness !" 
The spot selected with deliberate care, 
Fastidious from variety of choice, 
Where all was beautiful. Some pleasant nook 
Among the fringing alders: or beneath 
A single spreading oak : or higher up 
Within tlie thicket, a more secret bower, 
A little clearing carpeted all o'er 
With creeping strawberry, and greenest moss 
Thick vein'd with ivy. There unfolded smooth 
The snowy napkin (carefully secured 
At every corner with a pebbly weight,) 
Was spread prelusive ; fairly garnish'd soon 
With the contents (most interesting then) 
Of the well-plenish'd basket: simple viands, 
And sweet brown bread, and biscuits for dessert, 
And rich ripe cherries; and two slender flasks, 
Of cider one, and one of sweet new milk. 
Mine own allotted beverage, temper'd down 
From the near streamlet. Two small silver cups 
Set our grand buffet — and all was done ; 
But there I stood immovable, entranced, 
Absorb'd in admiration — shifting oft 
My ground contemplative, to rcperuse 
In every point of view the perfect whole 
Of that arrangement, mine own handiwork. 
Then glancing skyward, if my dazzled eyes 
Shrank from the sunbeams, vertically bright, 
Away, away, toward the river's brink 
I ran to summon from his silent sport 
My father to the banquet; tutor'd well. 
As I approach'd his station, to restrain 
All noisy outbreak of exuberant glee; 
Lest from their quiet haunts the finny prey 
Should dart far off to deeper solitudes. 
The gentle summons met observance prompt, 
Kindly considerate of the famish'd child : 
And all in order left — the mimic fly 
Examined and rcnew'd, if need required, 
Or changed for other sort, as time of day, 
Or clear or clouded sky, or various signs 
Of atmosphere or water, so advised 
Th' experienced angler; the long line afloat — 
The rod securely fix'd ; then into mine 
The willing hand was yielded, and I led 
With joyous exultation that dear guest 
To our green banquet-room. Not Leicester's self, 
When to the hall of princely Kenilworth 
He led Elizabeth, exulted more 
With inward gratulation at the show 
Of his own proud magnificence, than I, 
When full in view of mine arranged feast, 
I held awhile my pleased companion back, 
Exacting wonder — admiration, praise. 
With pointing finger, and triumphant " There !" 



MRS. SOUTHEY. 



257 



AUTUMN FLOWERS. 

Those few pale autumn flowers ! 

How beautiful they are ! 
Than all that went before, 
Than all the summer store, 

How lovelier far ! 

And why ? — they are the last — 

The last ! — the last ! — the last ! — 
Oh, by that little word, 
How many thoughts are stirr'd ! 
That sister of the past ! 

Pale flowers ! — pale, perishing flowers ! 

Ye're types of precious things ; 
Types of those bitter moments 
That flit, like life's enjoyments. 

On rapid, rapid wings. 

Last hours with parting dear ones, 
(That time the fastest spends,) 

Last tears, in silence shed. 

Last words, half-uttered, 

Ijast looks of dying friends ! 

Who but would fain compress 

A life into a day ; 
The last day spent with one 
WliOj ere the morrow's sun, 

Must leave us, and for aye 1 

precious, precious moments ! 

Pale flowers ! ye're types of those — 
The saddest ! sweetest ! dearest ! 
Because, like those, the nearest 

Is an eternal close. 

Pale flowers ! Pale, perishing flowers ! 
I woo your gentle breath; 

1 leave the summer rose 
For younger, blither brows — 

Tell me of change and death ! 



THE PAUPER'S DEATH-BED. 

Tread softly — bow the head — 
In reverent silence bow — 

No passing bell doth toll — 

Yet an immortal soul 
Is passing now. 

Stranger ! however great, 
With lowly reverence bow ; 

There's one in that poor shed^ 

One by that paltry bed — 
Greater than thou. 

Beneath that beggar's roof, 

Lo ! death does keep his state ; 

Enter — no crowds attend — 

Enter — no guards defend 
This palace gate. 

That pavement, damp and cold, 
No smiling courtiers tread ; 
33 



One silent woman stands. 
Lifting with meager hands 
A dying head. 

No mingling voices sound — 

An infant wail alone ; 
A sob suppress'd — agen 
That short, deep gasp, and then 

The parting groan. 

O change ! — wondrous change !- 
Burst are the prison bars — 

This moment there, so low, 

So agonized, and now 
Beyond the stars ! 

O change ! — stupendous change ! 

There lies the soulless clod ; 
The Sun eternal breaks — 
The new immortal wakes — 

Wakes with his God. 



THE MARINER'S HYMN. 

Launch thy bark, mariner ! 

Christian, God speed thee ! 
Let loose the rudder-bands — 

Good angels lead thee ! 
Set thy sails warily. 

Tempests will come ; 
Steer thy course steadilv. 

Christian, steer home ! 

Look to the weather-bow. 

Breakers are round thee ; 
Let fall the plummet now. 

Shallows may ground thee. 
Reef in the foresail, there ! 

Hold the helm fast ! 
So — let the vessel wear — 

There swept the blast. 

" What of the night, watchman 1 

What of the night ]" 
" Cloudy — all quiet — 

No land yet — all's right !" 
Be wakeful, be vigilant — 

Danger may be 
At an hour when all seemeth 

Securest to thee. 

How ! gains the leak so fast 1 

Clear out the hold — 
Hoist up thy merchandise, 

Heave out thy gold ; — 
There — let the ingots go — 

Now the ship rights ; 
Hurra ! the harbour's near — 

Lo, the red lights ! 

Slacken not sail yet 

At inlet or island ; 
Straight for the beacon steer, 

Straight for the high land ; 
Crowd all thy canvas on. 

Cut through the foam — 
Christian ! cast anchor now — 

Heaven is thy home ! 
y2 



HENRY HART MILMAN 



Henry Hart Milman was born in London 
on the tenth of February, 1791, and was the 
youngest son of Sir Francis Milman, physi- 
cian to the king'. In 1801 he was sent to 
Eton, and in 1810 he entered Brazen Nose 
College, Oxford, where he gained the first 
honours in examinations, and received many 
prizes for English and Latin poems and es- 
sajss. In 1815 he became a fellow of his 
college, and two years afterward entered into 
holy orders. The living of St. Mary's, in 
Reading, was bestowed upon him in 1817, 
and he devoted much of his attention to the 
duties of his profession, until he was elected 
Professor of Poetry at Oxford, in 1821. 

Mr. Milman commenced his course as a 
poet with the Judicium Regnk, in which the 
people of the different nations of Europe pro- 
nounce their judgment against Napoleon. 
This was followed by the tragedy of Fazio, 
which was performed before crowded houses 
at Drury Lane, and is still occasionally played 
in the British and American theatres. 

His next work. The Fall of .Jerusalem, ap- 
peared in 1820. The basis of the story is a 
passage in .Iosephus, and the events, occupy- 
ing a considerable time in the history, are in 
the play compressed into a period of thirty-six 
hours. The object of the author was to show 
the full completion of prophecy in the great 
event which he commemorates. 

The Martyr of Antioch, published in 1822, 
is founded on a legend related in the twenty- 
third chapter of Gibbon, of the daughter of a 
priest of Apollo at Antioch, who was beloved 
by Olvbius, prefect of the East in the reign 
of Probus, converted to the Christian religion, 
and sacrificed to the unrelenting spirit of 
offended heathenism. It is an attempt to pre- 
sent in contrast the simple faith of Jesus and 
the most gorgeous yet most natural of pagan 
superstitions, the worship of the sun. The 
tale is similar to that of Lockiiart's fine ro- 
mance of Valerius, by which it was probably 
suggested ; and, except in its tragical termina- 
tion and some minor characteristics, the plot of 
the drama is inferior to that of the novel. In 
the same year he finished Belshazzar. The 



subject is one of the noblest and most poetical 
in the Scriptures, but Mr. Milman failed, as 
signally as some writers of less pretension, 
in its treatment. The characters are the De- 
stroying Angel from Heaven, sent to complete 
the annihilation of Babylon; Belshazzar, his 
mother, Kalassan high-priest of Bel, the Cap- 
tain of the Guard, and the eunuch Sabaris, 
Chaldeans; with Daniel, Imlah, his wife, his 
daughter Benina, and her betrothed lover, He- 
brews. The story is that of the Handwriting 
on the Wall, with an underplot, in which Be- 
nina is seized as the virgin devoted to the 
pagan deity, but in fact destined for the cham- 
bers of Kalassan. The fall of the city inter- 
venes to save her; the Chaldeans perish, and 
the Jews are restored to happiness. The time is 
one day, from the morning to the conflagration 
of the Assyrian capital. These actors and cir- 
cumstances demand earnestness, force, tender- 
ness, the grandest and most beautiful imagery, 
and a sustained enthusiasm; but the piece is 
tame and monotonous, inferior, even its lyrical 
portions, to the earlier works of the author. 
The latest of his dramas is Anne Boleyn, in 
which the characters of King Henry and the 
Jesuit Angelo Caraffa are well delineated and 
sustained, though the work has no great merit 
as a play or a poem. 

Besides his dramatic works, Mr. Milman 
is the author of Samor, the Lord of the Bright 
City, an epic in twelve books; and a volume 
of minor poems, none of which are equal to 
passages in his tragedies. He has likewise 
written the best History of the Jews in our 
language, and a History of Christianity, both 
of which have been republished by Messrs. 
Harper of New York. He now resides in 
London, and is prebendary of St. Peter's, and 
minister of St. Margaret's, Westminster. 

Mr. Milman's poems contain some spirited 
lyrics, and much vigorous declamation and 
fine description; but, though he is not per- 
haps a plagiarist, they embrace nothing new, 
and nothing to entitle him to the appellation of 
a great poet. They are simply the verses of a 
well-educated gentleman, who has little sym- 
pathy with humanity. 



HENRY HART MILMAN. 



259 



ROWENA. 

Ceased the bold strain, then deep the Saxon 

drain'd 
The ruddy cup, and savage joy uncouth 
Lit his blue gleaming eyes: nor sate unmoved 
The Briton chiefs; fierce thoughts began to rise 
Of ancient wars, and high ancestral fame. 
Sudden came floating through the hall an air 
So strangely sweet, the o'erwrought sense scarce 
Its rich excess of pleasure; softer sounds [felt 
Melt never on the enchanted midnight cool, 
By haunted spring, where elfin dancers trace 
Green circlets on the moonlight dews; nor lull 
Becalmed mariner from rocks, where hasks 
At summer noon the sea-maid ; he his oar 
Breathless suspends, and motionless his bark 
Sleeps on the sleeping waters. Now the notes 
So gently died away, the silence seem'd 
Melodious; merry now, and light and blitlie 
They danced on air : anon came tripping forth 
In frolic grace a maiden troop, their locks 
Flower-wreathed, their snowy robes from clasped 

zone 
Fell careless drooping, quick their glittering feet 
Glanced o'er the pavement. Then the pomp of sound 
Sweil'd up, and mounted ; as the stately svv'an. 
Her milk-white neck embower'd in arching spray, 
Queens it along the waters, entered in 
The lofty hall a shape so fair, it lull'd 
The music into silence, yet itself 
Pour'd out, prolonging the soft ecstasy, 
The trembling and the touching of sweet sound. 
Her grace of motion and of look, the smooth 
And swimming majesty of step and tread, 
The symmetry of form and feature, set 
The soul afloat, even like delicious airs 
Of flute or harp : as though she trod from earth, 
And round her wore an emanating cloud 
Of harmony, the lady moved. Too proud 
For less than absolute command, too soft 
For aught but gentle, amorous thought: her hair 
Cluster'd, as from an orb of gold cast out 
A dazzling and o'erpowering radiance, save 
Here and there on her snowy neck reposed 
In a sooi^tied brilliance, some thin, wandering tress. 
The azure flashing of her eye vi'as fringed 
With virgin meekness, and her tread, that seem'd 
Earth to disdain, as softly fell on it 
As the light dew-shower on a tuft of flowers. 
The soul within seem'd feasting on high thoughts, 
That to the outward form and feature gave 
A loveliness of scorn, scorn that to feel 
Was bliss, was sweet indulgence. Fast sank back 
Those her fair harbingers, their modest eyes. 
Downcast, and drooping low their slender necks 
In graceful reverence ; she, by wondering gaze 
Unmoved, and stifled murmurs of applause. 
Nor yet unconscious, slowly won her way 
- To where the king, amid the festal pomp. 
Sate loftiest ; as she raised a fair-chased cup, 
Something of sweet confusion overspread 
Her features ; something tremulous broke in 
On her half-failing accents, as she said [up, 

"Health to the king!" — the sparkling wine laugh'd 



As eager 'twere to touch so fair a lip. 
A moment, and the apparition bright 
Had parted ; as before, the sound of harps 
Was wantoning about the festive hall. 



LAMENTATION OVER JERUSALEM. 

There have been tears from holier eyes than mine 
Pour'd o'er thee, Zion ! yea, the Son of Man 
This thy devoted hour foresaw and wept. 
And I — can I refrain from weeping? Yes, 
My country, in tliy darker destiny 
Will I awhile forget mine own distress. 

I feel it now, the sad, the coming hour; 

The signs are full, and never shall the sun 
Shine on the cedar roofs of Salem more ; 

Her tale of splendour now is told and done : 
Her wine-cup of festivity is spilt, 
And all is o'er, her grandeur and her guilt. 

O ! fair and favour'd city, where of old 
The balmy airs were rich with melody, 
That led her pomp beneath the cloudless sky 

In vestments flaming with the orient gold ; 

Her gold is dim, and mute her music's voice; 

The heathen o'er her perish'd pomp rejoice. 

How stately then was every palm-deck'd street, 
Down which the maidens danced with tinkling feet! 

How proud the elders in the lofty gate ! 
How crowded all her nation's solemn feasts 
With white-robed Levites and high-mitred priests! 

How gorgeous all her temple's sacred state. 
Her streets are razed, her maidens sold for slaves. 
Her gates thrown down, her elders in their graves; 
Her feasts are holden mid the gentile's scorn. 
By stealth her priesthood's holy garments worn ; 
And where her temple crown'd the glittering rock, 
The wandering shepherd folds his evening flock. 

W^hen shall the work, the work of death begin 1 
When come the avengers of proud Judah's sin? 
Aceldama ! accursed and guilty ground, 
Gird all the city in thy dismal bound ; 

Her price is paid, and she is sold like thou ; 
Let every ancient monument and tomb 
Enlarge the border of its vaulted gloom. 

Their spacious chambers all are wanted now. 

But never more shall yon lost city need 
Those secret places for her future dead ; 
Of all her children, when this night is pass'd, 
Devoted Salem's darkest, and her last, 
Of all her children none is left to her. 
Save those whose house is in the sepulchre. 

Yet, guilty city, who shall mourn for Iheel 

Shall Christian voices wail thy devastation? 
Look down ! look down, avenged Calvary, 

Upon thy late yet dreadful expiation. 
O ! long foretold, though slow accomplish'd fate, 
" Her house is left unto hor desolate ;" 
Proud Cffisar's ploughshare, o'er her ruins driven, 
Fulfils at length the tardy doom of Heaven ; 
The wrathful vial's drops at length are pour'd 
On the rebellious race that crucified their Lord ! 



260 



HENRY HART MILMAN. 



HYMN BY THE EUPHRATES. 

O Thou that wilt not break the bruised reed, 

Nor heap fresh ashes on the mourner's brow 
Nor rend anew the wounds that inly bleed, 

The only balm of our afflictions thou, 
Teach us to bear thy chas^tening wrath, O God ! 
To kiss with quivering lips — still humbly kiss thy 

rod! 
We bless thee, Lord, though far from Judah's land, 

Though our worn limbs are black with stripes 
and chains ; 
Though for stern foes we till the burning sand ; 

And reap, for others' joy, the summer plains ; 
We bless thee, Lord, for thou art gracious still. 
Even though this last black drop o'erflow our cup 

of ill ! 
We bless thee for our lost, our beauteous child; 

The tears, less bitter, she hath made us weep; 
The weary hours her graceful sports have 'guiled. 

And the dull cares her voice hath sung to sleep! 
She was the dove of hope to our lorn ark ; 
The only star that made the strangers' sky less dark ! 

Our dove is fallen into the spoiler's net ; 

Rude hands defile her plumes, so chastely white; 
To the bereaved their one soft star is set, 

And all above is sullen, cheerless night ! 
But still we thank thee for our transient bliss — 
Yet, Lord, to scourge our sins remain'd no way but 

this ! 
As when our Father to Mount Moriah led 

The blessing's heir, his age's hope and joy, 
Pleased, as he roam'd along with dancing tread, 

Chid his slow sire, the fond, officious boy, 
And laugh'd in sport to see the yellow five 
Climb up the turf-built shrine, his destined funeral 

pyre — 
Even thus our joyous child went lightly on ; 

Bashfully sportive, timorously gay, 
Her white foot bounded from the pavement stone 

Like some light bird from off the quivering spray; 
And back she glanced, and smiled in blamless glee, 
The cars, and helms, and spears, and mystic dance 

to see. 
By thee, Lord, the gracious voice was sent 

That bade the sire his murderous task forego : 
When to his home the child of Abraham went, 

His mother's tears had scarce begun to flow. 
Alas ! and lurks there, in the thicket's shade, 
The victim to replace our lost, devoted maid 1 

Lord, even through thee to hope were now too bold ; 

Yet 'twere to doubt thy mercy to despair. 
'Tis anguish, yet 'tis comfort, faint and cold, 

To think how sad we are, how blest we were ! 
To speak of her is wretchedness, and yet 
It were a grief more deep and bitterer to forget ! 

O Lord our God ! why was she e'er our own'? 

Why is she not our own — our treasure still? 
We could have pass'd our heavy years alone. 

Alas ! is this to bow us to thy will 7 
Ah ! even our humblest prayers we make repine, 
Nor prostrate thus on earth, our hearts to thee 
resign. 



Forgive, forgive — even should our full hearts break, 
The broken heart thou wilt not. Lord, despise : 

Ah ! thou art still too gracious to forsake, 
Though thy strong hand so heavily chastise. 

Hear all our prayers, hear not our murmurs, Iiord; 

And, though our lips rebel, still make thyself adored. 



JEWISH HYMN IN BABYLON. 

God of the thunder! from whose cloudy seat 

The fiery winds of Desolation flow: 
Father of vengeance ! that with purple feet, 

Iiike a full wine-press, tread'st the world below. 
The embattled armies wait thy sign to slay, 
Nor springs the beast of havoc on his prey, 
Nor withering Famine walks his blasted way, 
Till thou the guilty land hast seal'd for wo. 

God of the rainbow ! at whose gracious sign 

The billows of the proud their rage suppress: 
Father of mercies ! at one word of thine 

An Eden blooms in the waste wilderness ! 
And fountains sparkle in the arid sands. 
And timbrels ring in maidens' glancing hands, 
And marble cities crown the laughing lands. 
And pillar'd temples rise thy name to bless. 

O'er Judah's land thy thunders broke — Lord ! 

The chariots rattled o'er her sunken gate, 
Her sons were wasted by the Assyrian sword, 

Even her foes wept to see her fallen state ; 
And heaps her ivory palaces became. 
Her princes wore the captive's garb of shame, 
Her temple sank amid the smouldering flame. 

For thou didst ride the tempest cloud of fate. 

O'er Judah's. land thy rainbow, Lord, shall beam, 
And the sad city lift her crownless head ; 

And songs shall wake, and dancing footsteps gleam, 
Where broods o'er fallen streets the silence of 
the dead. 

The sun shall shine on Salem's gilded towers. 

On Cannel's side our maidens cull the flowers. 

To deck, at blushing eve, their bridal bowers, 
And angel feet the glittering Sion tread. 

Thy vengeance gave us to the stranger's hand, 

And Abraham's children were led forth for slaves; 
With fetter'd steps we left our pleasant land, 

Envying our fathers in their peaceful graves. 
The stranger's bread with bitter tears we steep. 
And when our weary eyes should sink to sleep, 
'Neath the mute midnight we steal forth to weep, 
Where the pale willows shade Euphrates' waves. 

The born in sorrow shall bring forth in joy; 

Thy mercy, Lord, shall lead thy children home; 
He that went forth a tender yearling boy, 

Yet, ere he die, to Salem's streets shall come. 
And Canaan's vines for us their fruits shall bear, 
And Hermon's bees their honied stores prepare ; 
And we shall kneel again in thankful prayer, 

Where, o'er the cherub-seated God, full blazed 
the irradiate dome. 



HENRY HART MILMAN. 



261 



ODE, TO THE SAVIOUR. 

For thou wert born of woman ! Ihou didst come, 
O Holiest ! to this world of sin and gloom, 
Not in thy dread omnipotent array; 
And not by thunders strew'd 
Was thy tempestuous road ; 
Nor indignation burnt before thee on thy way ; 

But thee, a soft and naked child, 

Thy mother undefiled 

In the rude manger laid to rest 

From oH' her virgin breast. 

The heavens were not commanded to prepare 
A gorgeous canopy of golden air; 
Nor stoop'd their lamps th' enthroned fires on high: 
A single silent star 
Came wandering from afar. 
Gliding uncheck'd and calm along the liquid sky; 

The eastern sages leading on. 

As at a kingly throne. 

To lay their gold and odours sweet 

Before thy infant feet. 

The earth and ocean were not hush'd to hear 
Bright harmony from every starry sphere; 
Nor at thy presence brake the voice of song 
From all the cherub choirs. 
And seraphs' burning lyres, 
Pour'd through the host of heaven the charmed 
clouds along. 
One angel-troop the strain began, 
Of all the race of man 
By simple shepherds heard alone, 
That soft hosanna's tone. 

And when thou didst depart, no car of flame 
To bear thee hence in larabicnt radiance came ; 
Nor visible angels mourn'd with drooping plumes: 
Nor didst thou mount on high 
From fatal Calvary, 
With all thine own redeera'd out bursting from 
their tombs. 
, For thou didst bear away from earth 
But one of human birth. 
The dying felon by thy side, to be 
In Paradise with thee. 

Nor o'er thy cross the clouds of vengeance brake; 
A little while the conscious earth did shake 
At that foul deed by her fierce children done ; 
A few dim hours of day 
The world in darkness lay; 
Then bask'd in bright repose beneath the cloud- 
less sun. 
While thou didst sleep within the tomb, 
Consenting to thy doom ; 
Ere yet the white-robed angel shone 
Upon the sealed stone. 

And when thou didst arise, thou didst not stand 
With devastation in thy red right hand, 
Plaguing the guilty city's murderous crew: 

But thou didst haste to meet 

Thy mother's coming feet. 
And bear the words of peace unto the faithful few. 



Then calmly, slowly didst thou rise 
Into thy native skies. 
Thy human form dissolved on high 
In its own ladiancy. 



THE MERRY HEART. 

I wouLT) not from the wise require 

The lumber of their learned lore ; 
Nor would I from the rich desire 

A single counter of their store. 
For I have ease, and I have wealth, 

A nd I have spirits light as air ; 
And more than wisdom, more than wealth,- 

A merry heart that laughs at care. 

At once, 'tis true, two witching eyes 

Surprised me in a luckless season, 
Turn'd all my mirth to lonely sighs, 

And quite subdued my better reason. 
Yet 'twas but love could make me grieve, 

And love you know's a reason fair, 
And much improved, as I believe. 

The merry heart, that laugh'd at care. 

So now, from idle wishes clear, 

I make the good I may not find ; 
Adown the stream I gently steer. 

And shift my sail with every wind. 
And half by nature, half by reason, 

Can still with pliant heart prepare, 
The mind, attuned to every season. 

The merry heart, that laughs at care. 

Yet, wrap me in your sweetest dream, 

Ye social feelings of the mind. 
Give, sometimes give your sunny gleam. 

And let the rest good-humour find. 
Yes, let me hail and welcome give 

To every joy my lot may share, ~ 
And pleased and pleasing let me live 

With merry heart, that laughs at care. 



MARRIAGE HYMN. 

To the sound of timbrels sweet 
Moving slow our solemn feet. 
We have borne thee on the road 
To the virgin's blest abode ; 
With thy yellow torches gleaming. 
And thy scarlet mantle streaming, 
And the canopy above 
Swaying as we slowly move. 
Thou hast left the joyous feast. 
And the mirth and wine have ceased; 
And now we set thee down before 
The jealously-unclosing door. 
That the favour'd youth admits 
W^here the veiled virgin sits 
In the bliss of maiden fear. 
Waiting our soft tread to hear; 
And the music's brisker din 
At the bridegroom's entering in, — 
Entering in a welcome guest 
To the chamber of his rest. 



1 
262 HENRY HART MILMAN. 


EVENING SONG OF MAIDENS. 


Brief our twilight dance must be 




Underneath the cypress tree. 


CoxE away, with willing feet 


Come away, and make no stay, 


Quit the close and breathless street ; 


Youth and maiden, come away. 


Sultry court and chamber leave, 
Come and taste the balmy eve, 






Where the grass is cool and green, 


CHORUS. 


And the verdant laurels screen 




All whose timid footsteps move 


KixG of kings ! and Lord of lords! 


With the quickening stealth of love; 


Thus we move, our sad steps timing 
To our cymbals' feeblest chiming. 


Where Orontes' waters hold 


Mirrors to your locJcs of gold. 


Where thy house its rest accords. 
Chased and wounded birds are we. 


And the sacred Daphne weaves 


Canopies of trembling leaves. 


Through the dark air fled to thee ; 


Come away, the heavens above 
Just have light enough for love ; 


To the shadow of thy wings. 
Lord of lords ! and King of kings ! 


And the crystal Hesperus 


Behold, Lord ! the heathen tread 


Lights his dew-fed lamp for us. 


The branches of thy fruitful vine, 


Come, the wider shades are falling, 


That its luxurious tendrils spread 


And the amorous birds are calling 


O'er all the hills of Palestine. 


Each his wandering mate to rest 


And now the wild boar comes to waste 


In the close and downy nest ; 


Even us, the greenest boughs and last, 


And the snowy orange flowers. 


That, drinking of thy choicest dew, 


And the creeping jasmine bowers, 


On Zion's hill, in beauty grew. 


From their swinging censers cast 


No ! bv the marvels of thine hand. 


Their richest odours, and their last. 


Thou still wilt save thy chosen land ! 




Come, the busy day is o'er, 


By all thine ancient mercies shown. 


Flying spindle gleams no more ; 


By all our fathers' foes o'erthrown ; 


Wait not till the twilight gloom 


By the Egyptian's car-borne host, 


Darken o'er the embroider'd loom. 


Scatter'd on the Red Sea coast ; 


Leave the toilsome task undone, 


By that wide and bloodless slaughter 


Leave the golden web unspun. 


Underneath the drowning water. 


Hark, along the humming air 


Like us in utter helplessness. 


Home the laden bees repair ; 


In their last and worst distress — 


And the bright and dashi)ig rill 


On the sand and sea-weed lying, 


From the side of every hill, 


Israel pour'd her doleful sighing ; 


With a clearer, deeper sound. 


While before the deep sea flow'd. 


Cools the freshening air around. 


And behind fierce Egypt rode — 




To their fothers' God they pray'd, 
To the liord of hosts for aid. 


Come, for though our God the Sun 


Now his fiery course hath run ; 




There the western waves among 


On the margin of the flood 


Lingers not his glory long ; 


With lifted rod the prophet stood ; 


There the couch awaits him still. 


And the summon'd east wind blew. 


Wrought by Jove-born Vulcan's skiU 


And aside it sternly threw 


Of the thrice-refined gold. 


The gather'd waves, that took their stand, 


With its wings that wide unfold, 


Like crystal rocks, on either hand, 


O'er the surface of the deep 


Or walls of sea-green marble piled 


To waft the bright-hair'd god asleep 


Round some irregular city wild. 


From the Hesperian islands blest. 


Then the light of morning lay 


From the rich and purple West, 


On the wonder-paved way. 


To where the swarthy Indians lave 


Where the treasures of the deep 


In the farthest Eastern wave. 


In their caves of coral sleep. 


There the Morn on tiptoe stands, 


The profound abysses, where 


Holding in her rosy hands 
All the amber-studded reins 
Of the steeds with fiery manes, 


Was never sound from upper air. 


Rang with Israel's chanted words. 
King of kings ! and Lord of lords ! 


For the sky-borne charioteer 


Then with bow and banner glancing. 


To start upon his new career. 


On exulting Egypt came. 


Come, for when his glories break 


With her chosen horseman prancing. 


Every sleeping maid must wake. 


And her cars on wheels of flame, 


Brief be then our stolen hour 


In a rich and boastful ring. 


In the fragrant Daphne's bower ; 


All around her furious king. 



HENRY HART MILMAN. 



263 



But the Lord from out his cloud, 
The Lord look'd down upon the proud; 
And the host drave heavily- 
Down the deep bosom of the sea. 

With a quick and sudden swell 

Prone the liquid ramparts fell ; 

Over horse, and over car, 

Over every man of war, 

Over Pharaoh's crown of gold 

The loud thundering billows roll'd. 

As the level waters spread 

Down they sank, they sank like lead, 

Down without a cry or groan. 

And the morning sun, tliat shone 

On myriads of bright-armed men, 

Its meridian radiance then 

Cast on a wide sea, heaving as of yore, 

Against a silent, solitary shore. 



FUNERAL ANTHEM. 

Brothkr, thou hast gone before us. 

And thy saintly soul is flown 
Where tears are wiped from every eye. 

And sorrow is unknown; 
From the burden of the flesh. 

And from care and fear released. 
Where the wicked cease from troubling. 

And the weary are at rest. 

The toilsome way thou'st travell'd o'er. 

And borne the heavy load. 
But Christ hath taught thy languid feet 

To reach his blest abode. 
Thou 'rt sleeping now, like Lazarus 

Upon his Father's breast, 
WHiere the wicked cease from troubling, 

And the weary are at rest. 

Sin can never taint thee now. 

Nor doubt thy faith assail, 
Nor thy meek trust in Jesus Christ 

And the Holy Spirit fail. 
And there thou 'rt sure to meet the good, 

Whom on earth thou lovedst best, 
Where the wicked cease from troubling. 

And the weary are at rest. 

"Earth to earth," and "dust to dust," 

The solemn priest hath said, 
So we lay the turf above thee now, 

And we seal t'ly narrow bed: 
But thy spirit, brother, soars away 

Among the faithful blest. 
Where the wicked cease from troubling. 

And the weary are at rest. 

And when the Lord shall sunnnon us, 

Whom thou hast left behind. 
May we, untainted by the world, 

As sure a welcome find ; 
May each, like thee, depart in peace, 

To be a glorious guest, 
Where the wicked cease from troubling. 

And the weary are at rest. 



THE USURER. 

Fazio. Dost thou know, Bianca, 
Our neighbour, old Bartolo ? 

Bianca. O yes, yes — 

That yellow wretch, that looks as he were stain'd 
With watching his own gold; everyone knows him. 
Enough to loathe him. Not a friend hath he, 
Nor kindred, nor familiar; not a slave. 
Not a lean serving wench ; nothing e'er enter'd 
But his spare .self within his jealous doors, 
Except a wandering rat; and that, they say. 
Was famine-struck, and died there. What of him] 

Fazio. Yet he, Bianca, he is of our rich ones. 
There's not a galliot on the sea but bears 
A venture of Bartolo's ; not an acre. 
Nay, not a villa of our proudest princes. 
But he hath cramp'd it with a mortgage; he. 
He only stocks our prisons with his debtors. 
I saw him creeping home last night; he shudder'd 
As he unlock'd his door, and look'd around, 
As if he thought that very breath of wind 
Were some keen thief; and when he lock'd him in, 
I heard the grating key turn twenty times. 
To try if all were safe. I look'd again 
From our high window by mere chance, and saw 
The motion of his scanty, moping lantern. 
And, where his wind-rent lattice was ill stufT'd 
With tatter'd remnants of a money-bag. 
Through cobwebs and thick dust I spied his face. 
Like some dry, wither-boned anatomy. 
Through a huge chest-lid, jealously and scantily 
Uplifted, peering upon coin and jewels, 
Ligots and wedges, and broad bars of gold. 
Upon whose lustre the wan light shone muddily. 
As though the New World had outrun the Spaniard, 
And emptied all its mines in that coarse hovel. 
His ferret eyes gloated as wanton o'er them 
As a gross satyr on a sleeping nymph ; 
And then, as he heard something like a sound. 
He clapp'd the lid to, and blew out the lantern ; 
But r, Bianca, hurried to thy arms. 
And thank'd my God that I had braver riches. 



BENINA TO BELSHAZZAR. 

— I hear abroad 
The exultation of unfetter'd earth ! — 
From east to west they lift their trampled necks. 
The indignant nations: earth breaks out in scorn; 
The valleys dance and sing; the mountains shake 
Their cedar-crowned tops ! The strangers crowd 
To gaze upon the howling wilderness. 
Where stood the Queen of Nations. Lo! even now. 
Lazy Euphrates rolls his sullen waves [reeds. 

Through wastes, and but reflects his own thick 
I hear the bitterns shriek, the dragons cry ; 
I see the shadow of the midnight owl 
Gliding where now are laughter-echoing palaces! 
O'er the vast plain I see the mighty tombs 
Of kings, in sad and boken whiteness gleam 
Beneath the o'ergrown cypress — but no tomb 
Bears record, Babvlon, of thy last lord ; 
Even nionuments are silent of Belshazzar ! 



JOHN KEBLE. 



I HAYE been able to learn scarcely any thing' 
of the history of Mr. Keble. He was edu- 
cated at Oxford, entered holy orders, and was 
for some time pastor of a rural congregation, 
to whose spiritual interests he devoted him- 
self with untiring ardour and affection. He 
M'as subsequently elected Professor of Poetry 
in the University of Oxford, and he has been 
distinguished as one of those eminent scholars 
and divines, among whom are Newman, Hook 
and PusEY, who have since shaken the reli- 
gious world with some of the most ingenious 
and able theological discussions of modern 
times, in the Oxford Tracts. 



Mr. Keble is known as a poet chiefly 
through The Christian Year, which was first 
published in 1827. It has passed througl* 
more than thirty editions in England, and has 
been several times reprinted in this country. 
The American impressions contain a preface 
and other valuable additions by the author's 
friend, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Doane, Bishop of 
the Episcopal church in New Jersey. Be- 
side this, he has written The Child's Chris- 
tian Year; some of the finest pieces in the 
Lyra Jlposfolica, and a new translation of the 
Psalms of David. I believe Mr. Keble is 
now about fifty years of age. 



ADVENT SUNDAY. 

Awake — again the Gospel-trump is blown — 
From year to year it swells with louder tone ; 
From year to year the signs of wrath 
Are gathering round the Judge's path : 
Strange words fulfill'd, and mighty works achieved, 
And truth in all the world both hated and beheved. 

Awake ! why linger in the gorgeous town, 
Sworn liegemen of the Cross and thorny crown 1 
Up, from your beds of sloth, for shame, 
Speed to the eastern mount like flame, 
Nor wonder, should ye find your king in tears, 
E'en with the loud Hosanna ringing in his ears. 

Alas ! no need to rouse them : long ago 
They are gone forth to swell Messiah's show ; 
With glittering robes and garlands sweet 
They strew the ground beneath his feet : 
All but your hearts are there — O doom'd to prove 
The arrows wing'd in heaven for faith that will not- 
love ! 

Meanwhile He paces through the adoring crowd, 
Calm as the march of some majestic cloud, 

That o'er wild scenes of ocean-war 

Holds its course in heaven afar : 
Even so, heart-searching Lord, as years roll on, 
Thou keepest silent watch from thy triumphal 
throne ; 

Even so, the world is thronging round to gaze 
On the dread vision of the latter days, 

Constrain'd to own Thee, but in heart 

Prepared to take Barabbas' part : 
" Hosanna" now, to-morrow " Crucify," 
The changeful burden still of their rude lawless cry. 

Yet, in that throng of selfish hearts untrue, 
Thy sad eye rests upon thy faithful few ; 

264 - 



Children and childlike souls are there, 

Blind Bartimeus' humble prayer, 
And Lazarus waken'd from his four days' sleep. 
Enduring life again, that Passover to keep. 

And fast beside the olive-border'd way [stay, 

Stands the bless'd home, where Jesus deign'd to 

And peaceful home, to Zeal sincere 

The heavenly Contemplation dear, 
Where Martha loved to wait with reverence meet, 
And wiser Mary linger'd at thy sacred feet. 

Still, through decaying ages as they glide. 
Thou lovest thy chosen remnant to divide ; 
Sprinkled along the waste of years, 
Full many a soft green isle appears: 
Pause where we may upon the desert road, 
Some shelter is in sight, some sacred, safe abode. 

When withering blasts of error swept the sky,* 
And Love's last flower sccm'd fain to droop and die, 

How sweet, how lone, the ray benign, 

On shelter'd nooks of Palestine ! 
Then to his early home did Love repair, [air. 

And cheer'd his sickening heart with his own native 

Years roll away : again the tide of crime 

Has swept thy footsteps from the favour'd clime. 

Where shall the holy Cross find rest? 

On a crown'd monarch's! mailed breast : 
Like some bright angel o'er the darkling scene, 
Through court and camp he holds his heavenward 

course serene. 
A fouler vision yet; an age of light. 
Light without love, glares on the aching sight: 

O who can tell how calm and sweet. 

Meek Walton ! shows thy green retreat, 
When wearied with the tale thy times disclose, 
The eye first finds thee out in thy secure repose! 

* Ariatiisni in the fourth cwiitiiry. 
I St. Louis in the thirteenth century. 



JOHN 


KEBLE. 


2G5 


THE FLOWERS OF THE FIELD. 


THE NIGHTINGALE. 




Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies, 


Lessovs sweet of spring returning. 




Bathed in soft airs, and fed with dew, 


Welcome to the thoughtful heart! 




What more than magic in you lies, 


May I call ye sense or learning. 


- 


To fill the heart's fond view ] 


Instinct pure, or heaven-taught art T 




In childhood's sports, companions gay, 


Be your title what it may, 




In sorrow, on life's downward way. 


Sweet and lengthening April day. 




How soothing ! in our last decay 


While with you the soul is free. 




• Memorials prompt and true. 


Ranging wild o'er hill and lea. 




Relics ye are of Eden's bowers, 


Soft as Memnon's harp at morning. 




As pure, as fragrant, and as fair, 


To the inward ear devout. 




As when ye crown'd the sunshine hours 


Touch'd by light, with heavenly warning 




Of happy wanderers there. 


Your transporting chords ring out. 




Fall'n all beside — the world of life. 


Every leaf in every nook. 




How is it stain'd with fear and strife ! 


Every wave in every brook. 




In Reason's world what storms are rife, 


Chanting with a solemn voice. 




What passions range and glare ! 


Minds us of our better choice. 




But cheerful and unchant^ed the while 


Needs no show of mountain hoary, 




Your first and perfect form ye show. 


W'inding shore or deepening glen, 




The same that vs'on Eve's matron smile 


Where the landscape in its glory 




In the world's opening glow. 


Teaches truth to wandering men: 




The stars of heaven a course are taught 


Give true hearts but earth and sky, 




Too high above our human thought; — 


And some flowers to bloom and die, — 




Ye may be found if ye are sought, 


Homely scenes and simple views 




And as we gaze, we know. 


Lowly thoughts may best infuse. 




Ye dwell beside our paths and homes, 


See the soft green willow springing 




Our paths of sin, our homes of sorrow, 


Where the waters gently pass. 




And guilty man, where'er he roams. 


Every way her free arms flinging 




Your innocent mirth may borrow. 


O'er the moss and reedy grass. 




The birds of air before us fleet. 


Long ere winter blasts are fled. 




They cannot brook our shame to meet — 


See her tipp'd with vernal red. 




But we may taste your solace sweet 


And her kindly flower display'd 




And come again to-morrow. 


Ere her leaf can cast a shade. 




Ye fearless in your nests abide — 


Though the rudest hand assail her. 




Nor may we scorn, too proudly wise. 


Patiently she droops awhile, 




Your silent lessons, undescried 


But when showers and breezes hail her, 




By all but lowly eyes : 


Wears again her willing smile. 




For ye could draw the admiring gaze 


Thus I learn contentment's power 




Of Him who worlds and hearts surveys ; 


From the slighted willow bower, 




Your order wild, your fragrant maze. 


Ready to give thanks and live 




He taught us how to prize. 


On the least that Heaven may give. 




Ye felt your Maker's smile that hour, 


If, the quiet brooklet leaving. 




As when He paused and own'd you good ; 


Up the stony vale I wind, 




His blessing on earth's primal bower. 


Haply half in fancy grieving 




Ye felt it all renew'd. 


For the shades I leave behind, 




What care ye now, if winter's storm 


By the dusty wayside drear. 




Sweep ruthless o'er each silken form ■* 


?\ightinn;ales with joyous cheer 




Christ's blessing at your heart is warm. 


Sing, ni}' sadness to reprove, 




Ye fear no vexing mood. 


Gladlier than in cultured grove. 




Alas ! of thousand bosoms kind, 


Where the thickest boughs are twining 




That daily court you and caress, 


Of the greenest, darkest tree. 




How few the happy secret find 


There they plunge, the light declining — 




Of your calm loveliness ! 


All may hear, but none may see. 




" Ijivc for to-day ! to-morrow's light 


Fearless of the passing hoof. 




To-morrow's cares shall bring to sight. 


Hardly will they fleet aloof; 




Go sleep like closing flowers at night. 


So they live in modest ways. 




And heaven thy morn will bless." 


Trust entire, and ceaseless praise. 




34 


Z 





266 



JOHN KEBLE. 



FOREST LEAVES IN AUTUMN. 

Red o'er the forest peers the setting sun, 
The line of yellow light dies fast away 

That crown'd the eastern copse ; and chill and dun 
Falls on the moor the brief November day. 

Now the tired hunter winds a parting note, 
And echo bids good-night from every glade ; 

Yet wait awhile, and see the calm leaves float 
Each to his rest beneath their parent shade. 

How like decaying life they seem to glide ! 

And yet no second spring have they in store, 
But where they fall forgotten to abide. 

Is all their portion, and they ask no more. 

Soon o'er their heads blithe April airs shall sing, 
A thousand wild-flowers round them shall unfold. 

The green buds glisten in the dews of spring. 
And all be vernal rapture as of old. 

Unconscious they in waste oblivion lie. 

In all the world of busy life around 
No thought of them ; in all the bounteous sky 

No drop, for them, of kindly influence found. 

Man's portion is to die and rise again — 

Yet he complains, while these unmurmuring part 

With their sweet lives, as pure from sin and stain. 
As his when Eden held his virgin heart. 

And haply, half unblamed his murmuring voice 
Might sound in heaven, were all his second life 

Only the first renew'd — the heathen's choice, 
A round of listless joy and weary strife. 

For dreary were this earth, if earth were all, 
Though brighten'd oft by dear aHection's kiss ; — 

Who for the spangles wears the funeral pall ! 
But catch a gleam beyond it, and 'tis bliss. 

Heavy and dull this frame of limbs and heart. 
Whether slow creeping on cold earth, or borne 

On lofty steed, or loftier prow, we dart 

O'er wave or field : yet breezes laugh to scorn. 

Our puny speed, and birds, and clouds in heaven, 
And fish, like hving shafts that pierce the main, 

And stars that shoot through freezing air at even — 
Who but would follow, might he break his chain? 

And thou shalt break it soon ; the grovelling worm 
Shall find his wings, and soar as fest and free 

As his transfigured Lord with lightning form 
And snowy vest — such grace He won for thee. 

When from the grave he sprung at dawn of morn. 
And led thro' boundless air thy conquering road. 

Leaving a glorious track, where saints new-born 
Might fearless follow to their blest abode. 

But first, by many a stern and fiery blast 

The world's rude furnace must thy blood refine. 

And many a gale of keenest wo be pass'd, 
Till every pulse beat true to airs divine ; 

Till every limb obey the mounting soul, 

The mounting soul, the call by Jesus given. 

He who the stormy heart can so control 
The laggard body soon will waft to heaven. 



DIMNESS. 

Of the bright things in earth and air 
How little can the heart embrace ! 

Soft shades and gleaming lights are there — 
I know it well, but cannot trace. 

Mine eye unworthy seems to read 

One page of Nature's beauteous book : 

It lies before me, fair outspread — 
I only cast a wishful look. 

I cannot paint to Memory's eye 

The scene, the glance, I dearest love^ 

Unchanged themselves, in me they die. 
Or faint, or false, their shadows prove. 

In vain, with dull and tuneless ear, 

I linger by soft music's cell. 
And in my heart of hearts would hear 

What to her own she deigns to tell. 

'Tis misty all, both sight and sound — 
I only know 'tis fair and sweet — 

'T is wandering on enchanted ground 
With dizzy brow and tottering feet. 

But patience ! there may come a time 
When these dull ears shall scan aright 

Strains, that outring earth's drowsy chime. 
As heaven outshines the taper's light. 

These eyes, that dazzled now and weak 
At glancing motes in sunshine wink, 

Shall see the King's full glory break, 
Nor from the blissful vision shrink : 

Though scarcely now their laggard glance 
Reach to an arrow's flight, that day 

They shall behold, and not in trance, 
The region " very far away." 

If memory sometimes at our spell 
Refuse to speak, or speak amiss, 

We shall not need her where we dwell, 
Ever in sight of all our bliss. 

Meanwhile, if over sea or sky. 

Some tender lights unnoticed fleet. 

Or on loved features dawn and die. 
Unread, to us, their lesson sweet ; 

Yet are there saddening sights around. 
Which heaven, in mercy, spares us too, 

And wc see far in holy ground, 
If duly purged our mental view. 

The distant landscape draws not nigh 
For all our gazing ; but the soul. 

That upward looks, may still descry 
Nearer, each day, the brightening goal. 

And thou, too curious ear, that fain 
Wouldst thread the maze of harmony, 

Content thee with one simple strain. 
The lowlier, sure, the worthier thee ; 

Till thou art duly train'd. and taught 
The concord sweet of love divine : 

Then, with that inward music fraught, 
For ever rise, and sing, and shine. 



JOHN KEBLE, 



267 



Thus bad and good their several warnings give 
Of His approach, whom none may see and Hve : 
Faith's ear, with awful still delight. 
Counts them like minute bells at night, 
Keeping the heart awake till dawn of morn, 
While to her funeral pile this aged world is borne. 

But what are Heaven's alarms to hearts that cower 
In wilful slumber, deepening every hour, 
That draw their curtains closer round. 
The nearer swells the trumpet's sound 1 
Lord, ere our trembling lamps sink down and die, 
Touch us with chastening hand, and make us feel 
Thee nigh. 



ADDRESS TO POETS. 

Ye whose hearts are beating high 
With the pulse of poesy, 
Heirs of more than i-oyal race, 
Framed by Heaven's peculiar grace, 
God's own work to do on earth, 

(If the word be not too bold,) 
Giving virtue a new birth, 

And a life that ne'er grows old — 

Sovereign masters of all hearts ! 
Know ye who hath set your parts 1 
He, who gave you breath to sing, 
By whose strength ye sweep the string, 
He hath chosen you to lead 

His hosannas here below ; — 
Mount, and claim your glorious meed ; 

Linger not with sin and wo. 

But if ye should hold your peace. 
Deem not that the song would cease — 
Angels round His glory-throne, 
Stars, His guiding hand that own. 
Flowers, that grow beneath our feet. 

Stones, in earth's dark womb that rest 
High and low in choir shall meet. 

Ere His name shall be unblest. 

Lord, by every minstrel tongue 
Be thy praise so duly sung. 
That thine angels' harps may ne'er 
Fail to find fit echoing here ! 
We the while, of meaner birth, 

Who in that divinest spell 
Dare not hope to join on earth, 

Give us grace to listen well. 

But should thankless silence seal 
Lips that might half-heaven reveal — 
Should hards in idol-hymns profane 
The sacred soul-enthralling strain, 
(As ill this bad world below 

Noblest things find vilest using,) 
Then, thy power and mercy show. 

In vile things noble breath infusing. 

Then waken into sound divine 
The very pavement of thy shrine, 



Till we, like heaven's star-sprinkled floor, 
Faintly give back what we adore, 
Childlike though the voices be, 

And untunable the parts. 
Thou wilt own the minstrelsy. 

If it flow from childlike hearts. 



THE UNITED STATES. 

Tyre of the farther west ! be thou too warn'd. 
Whose eagle wings thine own green world o'er- 
spread. 

Touching two oceans : wherefore hast thou scorn'd 
Thy fiithers' God, proud and full of bread ] 

Why lies the cross uidionour'd on thy ground. 
While in mid-air thy stars and arrows flaunt 1 

That sheaf of darts, will it not fall unbound. 
Except, disrobed of thy vain earthly vaunt. 
Thou bring it to be bless'd' where saints and 
angels haunt 1 

The holy seed, by Heaven's peculiar grace. 
Is rooted here and there in thy dark woods; 

But many a rank weed round it grows apace, 
And Mammon builds beside thy mighty floods, 

O'ertopping nature, braving nature's God ; 

Oh while thou yet hast room, fair, fruitful land. 

Ere war and want have stain'd thy virgin sod, 
Mark thee a place on high, a glorious stand, 
Whence truth her sign may make o'er forest, 
lake, and strand. 

Eastward, this hour, perchance thou turnest thine 
Listening if haply, with the surging sea [ear. 

Blend sounds of ruin from a land once dear 
To thee and Heaven. O trying hour for thee ! 

Tyre mock'd when Salem fell ; where now is Tyre 1 
Heaven was against her. Nations thick as waves 

Burst o'er her walls, to ocean doom'd and fire; 
And now the tidcless water idly laves 
Her towers, and lone sands heap her crowned 
merchants' graves. 



CHAMPIONS OF THE TRUTH. 
"Whoshall go forusl" And I said, "Here am I: sendme." 

DuLt thunders moan around the Temple rock, 

And deep in hollow caves, far underneath. 
The lonely watchman feels the sullen shock. 

His footsteps timing as the low winds breathe ; 
Hark ! from the Shrine is ask'd. What steadfast 
heart 
Dares in the storm go forth ? Who takes the 
Almighty's part ? 
And with a bold gleam flush'd, full many a brow 
Is raised to say, " Behold me. Lord, and send !" 
But ere the words be breathed, some broken vow 
Remember'd, ties the tongue ; and sadly blend 
With faith's pure incense,clouds of conscience dim, 
And faltering tones of guilt mar the Confessor's 
hymn. 



CHARLES WOLFE. 



This poet was born in Dublin, on the four- 
teenth of December, 1791. On- the death of 
his father, the family removed to England, 
■where they resided several years. In 1805 
young Wolfe was placed at the Winchester 
School, where he remained until 1809, when 
he entered the university of his native city. 
Here he was distinguished as a classical scho- 
lar, and for his abilities as a poet. At a very 
early age, while at Winchester, he had written 
verses remarkable as the productions of one 
so young, and before completing his twenty- 
first year, he gained the reputation of being 
the first genius in the university, by two poems 
of considerable merit, Jugurtha and Patriot- 
ism, for the last of which a prize was given 
by one of the college societies. 

In the autumn of 1817, Mr. Wolfe entered 
into holy orders, and he soon after obtained a 
living in an obscure parish of Tyrone county, 
and subsequently the curacy of Castle Caul- 
field. He devoted himself with untiring assi- 
duity to the duties of his profession until the 
spring of 1821, when symptoms of consump- 
tion made their appearance, and he was in- 
duced to visit Scotland, to consult a physician 



distinguished for his skill in the treatment of 
pulmonary complaints. This visit was pro- 
ductive of no benefit. Wolfe returned to his 
cure, and soon after went to reside in Devon- 
shire, and subsequently at Bordeaux in the 
south of France. The summer months of 
1822 were passed with his friend Archdeacon 
Russell, in Dublin. In November of that 
year he removed to the Cove of Cork, where 
he died on the twenty-first of February, 1823, 
in the thirty-second year of his age. 

Wolfe is chiefly known as the writer of 
the lines on the Burial of Sir John Moore, 
which were origmally printed anonymously, 
and attributed in turn to nearlj'' every eminent 
poet of the day. Their authorship has been a 
subject of some controversy since the death 
of Wolfe, but the question has been put to 
rest by an article in the Dublin University 
Magazine for December, 1842, in which the 
proofs that it is by Wolfe are demonstrative. 
Several of his other pieces are distinguished for 
exquisite melody and tenderness, and show that 
he was capable of the highest lyrical efforts. 
Dr. RussEL has published the Remains of 
Wolfe, with an interesting nremoir of his life. 



THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE. 

Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note, 
As his corse to the rampart we hurried ; 

Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot 
O'er the grave where our hero we buried. 

We buried him darkly at dead of night, 
The sods with our bayonets turning, — 

By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, 
And the lantern dimly burning. 

No useless coffin encloised his breast, 

Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him ; 

But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, 
With his martial cloak around him. 

Few and short were the prayers we said, 
And we spoke not a word of sorrow ; 

But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, 
And we bitterly thought of the morrow. 

268 



We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed, 
And smooth'd down his lonely pillow. 

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his 
head. 
And we far away on the billow ! 

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, 
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him ; — 

But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on 
In the grave where a Briton has laid him. 

But half of our heavy task was done, 

When the clock struck the hour for retiring ; 

And we heard the distant and random gun, 
That the foe was sullenly firing. 

Slowly and sadly we laid him down, 

From the field of his fame fresh and gory : 

We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, — 
But left him alone with his glory. 



CHARLES WOLFE. 



269 



OH, MY LOVE HAS AN EYE OJ 
SOFTEST BLUE. 



THE 



Oh, my love has an eye of the softest liluc, 

Yet it was not that that won nic ; 
But a little bright drop from her soul was there, 

'Tis tliat that has undone mc. 

I might have pass'd that lovely cheek, 
Nor, perchance, my heart have left me ; 

But the sensitive blush that came trembling there. 
Of my heart it for ever bereft me. 

I might have forgotten that red, red lip — 
Yet how from that thought to sever 1 — 

But there was a smile from the sunshine within, 
And that smile I '11 remember for ever. 

Think not 'tis nothing but lifeless clay, 

The elegant form that haunts me ; 
'Tis the gracefully delicate mind that moves 

In every step, that enchants me. 

Let me not hear the nightingale sing, 
Though I once in its notes delighted ; 

The feeling and mind that comes whispering forth 
Has left me no music beside it. 

Who could blame had I loved that face, 
Ere my eye could twice explore her ; 

Yet it is for the fairy intelligence there. 
And her warm — warm heart I adore her. 



OH, SAY NOT THAT MY HEART LS 
COLD. 

On, say not that my heart is cold 

To aught that once could warm it ; 
That nature's form, so dear of old. 

No more has power to charm it ; 
Or, that the ungenerous world can chill 

One glow of fond emotion 
For those who made it dearer still, 

And shared my wild devotion. 

Still oft those solemn scenes I view 

In rapt and dreamy sadness ; 
Oft look on those who loved them too 

With fancy's idle gladness ; 



Again I long'd to view the light 

In nature's features glowing ; 
Again to tread the mountain's height, 

And taste the soul's o'erflowing. 

Steiji duty rose, and frowning flung 

His leaden chain around me ; 
With iron look and sullen tongue 

He mutter'd as he bound me : 
" The mountain-breeze, the boundless heaven 

Unfit for toil the creature ; 
These for the free alone are given — 

But what have slaves with nature V 



IF I HAD THOUGHT THOU COULDST 
HAVE DIED. 

If I had thought thou couldst have died, 

I might not weep for thee ; 
But I forgot, when by thy side. 

That thou couldst mortal be ! 
It never through my mind had past. 

The time would e'er be o'er, — 
And I on thee should look my last, 

And thou shouldst smile no more ! 

And still upon that face I look. 

And think 'twill smile again; 
And still the thought I will not brook, 

That I must look in vain ! 
But when I speak, thou dost not say 

What thou ne'er left'st unsaid ; 
And now I feel, as well I may. 

Sweet Mary ! thou art dead ! 

If thou wouldst stay, e'en as thou art, 

All cold and all serene, — 
I still might press thy silent heart. 

And where thy smiles have been ! 
While e'en thy chill, bleak corse I have. 

Thou seemest still mine own ; 
But there I lay thee in thy grave, — 

And I am now alone ! 

I do not think, where'er thou art, 

Thou hast forgotten me ; 
And I, perhaps, may soothe this heart. 

In thinking too of thee : 
Yet there was round thee such a dawn 

Of light ne'er seen before, — 
As fancy never could have drawn, 

And never can restore ! 



z2 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 



The life of Shelley is familiar to most 
readers of modern literature. It involves 
questions too grave and extensive to be even 
glanced at in these pages, and I shall attempt 
to give but little more than its chronology. 

Percy Bysshe ynELLEY, the eldest son of 
Sir Timothy Shelley, was born at Field 
Place, in the county of Suffolk, on the fourth 
of August, 1792. When thirteen years of age, 
he was sent to Eton, whence at an earlier 
period than usual he was transferred to Ox- 
ford. While in the university he was re- 
served and melancholy, but studious. His 
thirst for knowledge was insatiable, and he 
directed his inquiries into every department 
of science and opinion. He became interested 
in the speculations of the French philosopbers, 
and a convert to their fallacies. He avowed 
his new principles, and boldly challenged his 
teachers to the discussion of the truth of the 
Christian religion. His expulsion from the 
university followed, and the event exaspe- 
rated and embittered his mind to the verge 
of madness. He was confirmed in his belief, 
and driven yet further from the truth, by what 
he deemed oppression and despotism. In tlie 
excitement of this period he wrote Queen Mab, 
the most wonderful work ever produced by 
one so young. It was unpublished several 
years, and it finally appeared without his con- 
sent. It is an earnest expression of the feel- 
ings born at Oxford; of unbelief, of protesta- 
tion, and defiance. 

His family were offended by his course at 
the university, and more so, soon after, by 
his marriage. The union was on every ac- 
count unfortunate. Both were very young; 
and Shelley soon found that he could have 
little sympathy of taste or feeling with his 
Avife. After the birth of two children they 
separated, by mutual consent, and she subse- 
quently committed suicide, though not until 
he had united himself to a daughter of God- 
win and Mary Wolstonecraft. This was 
the great error of his life; he should not have 
married again while Mrs. Shelley lived; but 
an intimate knowledge of the circumstances 

and of his principles would have made less 
270 



harsh the condemnation which the act occa- 
sioned. 

In 1814 Shelley went abroad, visited the 
more magnificent scenes of Switzerland, and 
returned to England by the Reuss and the 
Rhine. In the following siimmer he wrote 
Alastor or the Spirit of Solitude. Alastor is 
a young enthusiast who has vainly sought, in 
the works of the philosophers and in travel, 
the impersonation of a beau ideal which has 
no existence; and he dies in despair, on find- 
ing that he has spent his years in a dream. 
It is a noble poem, beautiful, tranquil, and 
solemn. The melodious versification is in 
keeping with the exalted melancholy of the 
thought. It was the ideal of Shelley's emo- 
tions, in the hues inspired by his brilliant 
imagination, softened by the recent anticipa- 
tion of death. 

The year 1816 was spent chiefly on the 
shores of the lake of Geneva. It was during 
a voyage round this lake with Lord Byron, 
with whom he had recently become acquaint- 
ed, that he wrote the Hymn to Intellectual 
Beauty, and Mont Blanc was inspired soon 
after by a view of that mountain while on his 
way through the valley of Chamouni. 

In 1817 Shelley wrote The Revolt of 
Islam, and several shorter pieces and frag- 
ments. The beautiful dedication of the Revolt 
of Islam to his wife I have copied into tliis 
volume. Of the poem itself I shall attempt 
no minute description. It was his design, 
when commencing it, to entitle it Laon and 
Cythna or the Revolution of the Golden Cit)', 
and to make it a story of passion; but as he 
advanced his plan was changed. At the end 
of six months, devoted to the task with un- 
remitted ardour and enthusiasm, he finished 
the work, which, with all its beauty and mag- 
nificence, with all the truth that glows in the 
darkness of its error, it had been better for the 
world if he had left unwritten. 

An act more infamous than any of which 
Shelley was ever even accused, was that of 
the Court of Chancery, under the presidency of 
Lord Eldon, by which he was deprived of the 
guardianship of his children, on the ground 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



271 



that his antisocial and irreligious principles 
unfitted him to be their educator. This atro- 
cious violation of the law of nature drove him 
from England for ever. While crossing the 
sea, under the impression that expatriation 
was necessary to preserve his child, he gave 
utterance to his uncontrollable emotions in 
some lines, addressed to his youngest son : — 

Thfi billows are leaping arnntui it, 

The bark is weak and frail, 
The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it, 

D.irkly strew the gale. 
Come with imp, thon delightful child, 
Come with me, though the wave is wild, ' 
And the winds are loose ; we must not stay, 
Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away. 

Rest, rest, shriek not, thou gentle child! 

The rocking of the boat Ihoii fearest. 
And the cold spray and the clanmur wild'? 

There sit between us two, thou dearest; 
Me and thy mother — well we know 
The storm at which thou tremblest so, 
With all its dark and hungry graves, 
Less cruel than the savage slaves 
Who hunt us o'er these sheltering waves. 

This hour will sometime in thy memory 

Be a dream of days forgotten ; 
We soon shall dwell by the azure sea 

Of serene and golden Italy, 

Or Greece, the Mother of the free. 

And I will teach thine infant tongue 

To call upon those heroes old 

In their own language, and will mould 

Thy growing spirit in the fiame 

Of Grecian lore ; that by such name 

A patriot's birthright tliou mayst claim. 

When afterwards this child died at Rome, 
he wrote of the English burying-ground in that 
city, "This spot is the repository of a sacred 
loss, of which the yearnings of a parent's 
heart are now prophetic ; he is rendered im- 
mortal by love, as his memory is by death. 
My beloved child is buried here. I envy 
death the body far less than the oppressors 
the minds of those whom they have lorn from 
me. The one can only kill the body, the 
other crushes the affections." 

Rosalind and Helen, which had been began 
in England, was finished at the baths of 
Lucca, in the summer of 1818. From Lucca 
Shelley went to Venice, near which city he 
commenced his greatest work, Prometheus 
Unbound. In the winter he removed to 
Naples. He suffered much from ill health; 
and in the spring of 1819 went to Villa Val- 
sovana, in the vicinity of Leghorn, where he 
wrote the Masque of Anarchy, from which 
Liberty, in this volume, is extracted, and the 
Tragedy of the Cenci. The close of the year 
1919 was spent in Florence, and the ensuing 
summer at the baths of San Giuliano, near 



Pisa. In 1820 he wroteThe Sensitive Plant, 
Julian and Maddalo, The Witch of Atlas, 
and many smaller pieces. In 1821 he was 
still at Pisa. His principal writings this year 
were Epipsychidion and Adonais. In the 
spring of 1822 he hired a villa near Lerici, on 
the bay of Spczia. On the first of July he 
left home, in a small vessel which had been 
built for him, to meet his friend Leigh Hunt, 
who had just arrived at Pisa. Two weeks 
after, he was lost in a storm at sea. In Ado- 
nais he had almost anticipated his destiny. 
When the mind figures his boat veiled from 
sight by the clouds, as it was last seen upon 
the ocean, and then the waves, when the 
storm had passed, without a sign of where it 
had been, it may well regard as prophecy the 
last stanza of the hymn to the memory of his 
brother bard : — 

The breath, whose might I have invoked in song, 
Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven. 
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng, 
Whose sails were never to the tempest given; 
The massy earth and spln^red skies are riven ; 
1 am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; 
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of heaven, 
The soul of Adonais, like a star. 
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 

Shelley's predominant faculty was his 
imagination. Fantasy prevails to such an 
extent in his long poems, that they are too 
abstract for the " daily food" of any but ideal 
minds. No modern poet has created such an 
amount of mere imagery. There is a want 
of simplicity and human interest about his 
productions Avhich render them "caviare to 
the general." He has been well designated 
as the poet for poets. Two or three of his 
short pieces are models of lyric beauty. His 
classic dramas abound in rich metaphors. 
The Cenci is unquestionably the most re- 
markable of modern plays. Greek literature 
modified his taste, and a life of singular 
vicissitude disturbed the healthful current 
of a soul cast in a gentle but heroic mould. 
His aspirations were exalted, and his genius 
of the first order. Notwithstanding all the 
injustice done him by men prejudiced by his 
irreligious opinions, it is my belief, from a 
careful study of his life, that the world has 
scarcely furnished a more noble nature. He 
m'ght have been a Christian had he suffered 
less from man's inhumanity. The weakness 
and wickedness which made him an exile 
from his home and country, hardened his heart 
and petrified his feelings against an influence 



272 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



which is rarely powerful save when it comes 
in the guise of love. 

The last edition of Shelley's writings, 
published by Mr. Moxon, was edited by his 
widow, the author of Frankenstein, a woman 
worthy to be the wife of such a man. Its 
notes, with the text, constitute the best bio- 
graphy of the poet. 

In our own country more justice has been 
done to Shelley's genius, motives, and ac- 
tions than they have received at home. I refer 
with pleasure for a more elaborate discussion 



of his claims than I can here present, to Ram- 
bles and Reveries, by my friend H. T. Tucker- 
man; a volume which contains a series of 
essays on the modern English poets, by one 
of the most elegant and discriminating critics 
of the day. 

Shelley left but one child, a son, Percy 
Florence Shelley, who, by the death of the 
poet's father in the summer of 1844, has be- 
come a baronet and succeeded to the family 
estates. Sir Pepxy Shelley is now about 
twenty-five years of age. 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 

PAIIT I. 

A SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew, 

And the young winds fed it with silver dew, 

And it open'd its fan-like leaves to the light, 

And closed them beneath the kisses of night. 

And the spring arose on the garden fair, 

And the Spirit of Love felt everywhere ; 

And each flower and herb on earth's dark breast 

Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest. 

But none ever trembled and panted with bliss 

In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, 

Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want, 

As the companionless Sensitive Plant. 

The snowdrop, and then the violet, 

Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, 

And their breath was mix'd with freslf odour, sent 

From the turf, like the voice and the instrument. 

Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, 

And narcissi, the fairest among them all, 

Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess. 

Till they die of their own dear loveliness ; 

And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, 

Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale, 

That the light of its tremulous bells is seen 

Through their pavilions of tender green ; 

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue. 

Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew 

Of music so delicate, soft, and intense. 

It was felt like an odour within the sense ; 

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest, 

Which unveil'd the depth of her glowing breast, 

Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air 

The soul of her beauty and love lay bare : 

And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, 

As a Msenad, its moonlight-colour'd cup. 

Till the fiery star, which is its eye. 

Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky ; 

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, 

The sweetest flower for scent that blows ; 

And all rare blossoms from every clime 

Grew in that garden in perfect prime. 

And on the stream whose inconstant bosom 

Was prankt under boughs of embowering blossom, 

With golden and green light, slanting through 

Their heaven of many a tangled hue, 

Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, 

And starry river-buds glimmer'd by, 



And around them the soft stream did glide and dance 

With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. 

And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss. 

Which led through the garden along and across, 

Some open at once to the sun and the breeze. 

Some lost among the bowers of blossoming trees, 

Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells 

As fair as the fabulous asphodels ; 

And flowrets which drooping as day droop'd too, 

Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue, 

To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew. 

And from this undefiled Paradise 

The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes 

Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet 

Can first lull, and at last must awaken it,) 

When heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them. 

As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem. 

Shone smiling to heaven, and every one 

Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun ; 

For each one was interpenetrated 

With the light and the odour its neighbour shed, 

Likeyoung lovers whom youth and love make dear, 

Wrapp'd and fill'd by their mutual atmosphere. 

But the Sensitive Plant which could give small fruit 

Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root, 

Received more than all, it loved more than ever. 

Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver; 

For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower ; 

Radiance and odour are not its dower ; 

It loves, even like love, its deep heart is full. 

It desires v^'hat it has not, the beautiful ! 

The light winds which from unsustaining wings 

Shed the music of many murmurings ; 

The beams which dart from many a star 

Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar; 

The plumed insects swift and free. 

Like golden boats on a sunny sea, 

Laden with light and odour, which pass 

Over the gleam of the living grass ; 

The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie 

Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high. 

Then wander like spirits among the spheres. 

Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears ; 

The quivering vapours of dim noontide. 

Which, like a sea, o'er the warm earth glide. 

In which every sound, and odour, and beam. 

Move, as reeds in a single stream ; 

Each and all like ministering angels were 

For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



273 



Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by 
Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky. 
And when evening descended from heaven above, 
And the earth was all rest, and the air was all love, 
And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, 
And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep, 
And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were 

drown'd 
In an ocean of dreams without a sound ; [press 
Whose waves never mark, though they ever ira- 
The light sand which paves it, consciousness ; 
(Only over head the sweet nightingale 
Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail, 
And snatches of its Elysian chant 
Weremix'd with the dreams of the .Sensitive Plant, j 
The Sensitive Plant was the earliest 
Up-gather'd into the bosom of rest ; 
A sweet child weary of its delight, 
The feeblest and yet the favourite. 
Cradled within the embrace of night. 

PART II. 

There was a Power in this sweet place, 

An Eve in this Eden ; a ruling grace 

Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream, 

Was as God is to the starry scheme. 

A lady, the wonder of her kind, 

Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind 

Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion 

Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean, 

Tended the garden from morn to even : 

And the meteors of that sublunar heaven, 

Like the lamps of the air when night walks forth, 

Laugh'd round her footsteps up from the earth ! 

She had no companion of mortal race, 

But her tremulous breath and her flushing face 

Told, whilst the morn kiss'd the sleep from her eyes, 

That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise : 

As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake 

Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake, 

As if yet around her he lingering were. 

Though the veil of daylight conceal'd him from her. 

Her step seem'd to pity the grass it prest ; 

You might hear, by the heaving of her breast, 

That the coming and the going of the wind 

Brought pleasure there and left passion behind. 

And wherever her airy footstep trod, 

Her trailing hair from the grassy sod 

Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep, 

liike a sunny storm o'er the dark green deep. 

I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet 

Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet ; 

I doubt not they felt the spirit that came 

From her glowing fingers through all their frame. 

She sprinkled bright water from the stream 

On those that were faint with the sunny beam ; 

And out of the cups of the heavy flowers 

She emptied the rain of the thunder showers. 

She lifted their heads with her tender hands, 

And sustain'd them with rods and ozier bands; 

If the flowers had been her own infants, she 

Could never have nursed them more tenderly. 

And all killing insects and gnawing worms, 

And things of obscene and unlovely forms. 

She bore in her basket of Indian woof. 

Into the rough woods far aloof: 

35 I 



In a basket, of grasses and wild flowers full, 
The freshest her gentle hands could pull 
For the poor banish'd insects, whose intent, 
Although they did ill, was innocent. 
But the bee and the bearnlike ephemeris, [kiss 
■ Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that 
The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she 
Make her attendant angels be. 
And many an antenatal tomb, 
Where butterflies dream of the life to come. 
She left clinging round the smooth and dark 
Edge of the odorous cedar bark. 
This fairest creature from earliest spring 
Thus moved through the garden ministering 
All the sweet season of summer tide. 
And ere the first leaf look'd brown — she died ! 

PART III. 

Three days the flowers of the garden fair. 
Like stars when the moon is awaken'd, were. 
Or the waves of Baiae, ere luminous 
She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius. 
And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant 
Felt the sound of the funeral chant. 
And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow, 
And the sobs of the mourners deep and low; 
The weary sound and the heavy breath, 
And the silent motions of passing death, 
And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, 
Sent through the pores of the coffin plank ; 
The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass, 
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass ; 
From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone, 
And sate in the pines and gave groan for groan. 
The garden, onck fair, became cold and foul. 
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul; 
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep. 
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap 
To make men tremble who never weep. 
Swift summer into the autumn flovv'd. 
And frost in the mist of the morning rode. 
Though the noonday sun look'd clear and bright, 
Mocking the spoil of the secret night. 
The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, 
Paved the turf and the moss below. 
The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan. 
Like the head and the skin of a dying man ; 
And Indian plants, of scent and hue 
The sweetest that ever were fed on dew. 
Leaf after leaf day by day. 
Were mass'd into the common clay. 
And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red, 
And white with the whiteness of what is dead, 
Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind past ; 
Their whistling noise made the birds aghast. 
And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds 
Out of their birth-place of ugly weeds, 
Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem, 
Which rotted into the earth with them. 
The water-blooms under the rivulet 
Fell from the stalks on which they were set; 
And the eddies drove them here and there. 
As the winds did those of the upper air. 
Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks 
Were bent and tangled across the walks ; 
And the leafless net-work of parasite bowers 



274 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



Mass'J into rviin, and all sweet flowers. 
Between the time of the wind and the snow, 
All loathliest weeds began to grow, 
Whose coarse leaves were splash'd with many a 

speck, 
Like the water-snake's belly and the toad's back. 
I And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank, 
>! And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, 
'l Stretch'd out its long and hollow shank. 
And stided the air till the dead wind stank. 
And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath, 
Fill'd the place with a monstrous undergrowth, 
Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, 
Livid, and slarr'd with a lurid dew. 
And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould, 
Started like mist from the wet ground cold ; 
Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead 
With a spirit of growth had been animated ! 
Spawn, weeds, and tilth, a leprous scum, 
!Made the running rivulet thick and dumb, 
And at its outlet, flags huge as stakes 
Dammed it up with roots knotted like water- 
snakes. 
And hour by hour, when the air was still. 
The vapours arose which have strength to kill : 
At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt. 
At night they were darkness no star could melt. 
And unctuous meteors from spray to spray 
Crept and flitted in broad noonday 
Unseen ; every branch on which they alit 
By a venomous blight was burn'd and bit. 
'i'he Sensitive Plant, like one forbid, 
Wept, and the tears within each lid 
Of its folded leaves, which together grew, 
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue. 
"For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon 
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn ; 
The sap shrank to the root through every pore. 
As blood to a heart that will beat no more. 
For winter came : the wind was his whip : 
One choppy finger was on his lip: 
He had torn the cataracts from the hills. 
And they clank'd at his girdle like manacles; 
His breath was a chain which without a sound 
The earth, and the air, and the water bound; 
He came, fiercely driven in his chariot-throne 
By the tenfold blasts of the arctic zone. 
Then the weeds which were forms of living death 
Fled from the frost to the earth beneath. 
Their decay and sudden flight from frost 
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost ! 
And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant 
The moles and the dormice died for want : 
The birds dropp'd stiff from the frozen air, 
And were caught in the branches naked and bare. 
First there came down a thawing rain. 
And its dull drops froze on the boughs again ; 
Then there steam'd up a freezing dew 
Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew ; 
And a northern whirlwind, wandering about 
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out, 
Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy and stiff. 
And snapp'd them ofl'with his rigid griff. 
When winter had gone and spring came back, 
The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck ; 



But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and 

darnels, 
Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels. 

CO.NCLUSION. 

Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that 
Which within its boughs like a spirit sat 
Ere its outward form had known decay, 
Now felt this cliange, I cannot say. 
Whether that lady's gentle mind. 
No longer with the form combined 
Which scattered love, as stars do light, 
Found sadness, where it left delight, 
I dare not guess ; but in this life 
Of error, ignorance, and strife. 
Where nothing is, but all things seem, 
And we the shadows of the dream, 
It is a modest creed, and yet 
Pleasant, if one considers it. 
To own that death itself must be, 
Like all the rest, a mockery. 
That garden sweet, that lady fair. 
And all sweet shapes and odours there, 
In truth have never pass'd away : 
'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed ; not they. 
For love, and beauty, and delight. 
There is no death nor change : their might 
Exceeds our organs, which endure 
No light, being themselves obscure. 



LOVE. 



Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all 
W^e can desire, O Love ! and happy souls. 
Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall. 
Catch thee and feed from thine o'erflowing bowls, 
Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew. 
Thou art the radiance which when ocean rolls 
Investeth it ; and when the heavens are blue 
Thou fillest them : and when the earth is fair 
The shadows of thy moving wings imbue 
Its deserts, and its mountains; till they wear 
Beauty, like some bright robe. Thou ever soarest 
Among the towers of men ; and as soft air 
In spring, which moves the unawakened forest, 
Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak, 
Thou floutest among men ; and age implorest 
That which from thee they should implore : — the 
Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts [weak 
The strong have broken — yet where shall any seek 
A garment, whom thou clothest not 1 



THE UNATTAINED. 

To thirst and find no fill — to wail and wander 
With short unsteady steps — to pause and ponder — 
To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle 
Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle; 
To nurse the image of unfelt caresses 
Till dim imagination just possesses 
The half-created shadow. 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, 



275 



DEDICATION TO "THE REVOLT OF 
ISLAM." 

So now my summer task is ended, Mary, 
And I return to thcc, mine own heart's home; 
As to his queen some victor knight of faery. 
Earning i)right spoil^i for her enchanted dome; 
IN or thou disdain, that ere my fame become 
A star among the stars of mortal night. 
If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom, 
Its doubtful promise thus I would unite [light. 
With thy beloved name, thou child of love and 

The toil which stole from thee so many an hour 
Is ended. — And the fruit is at thy feet I 
No longer where the woods to frame a bower 
With interlaced branches mix and meet. 
Or where, with sound like many voices sweet, 
Water-fills leap among wild islands green. 
Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat 
Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen : 
But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been. 

Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, 

when first 
The clouds which wrap this world from youth 

did pass. 
I do remember well the hour which burst 
My spirit's sleep : a fresh Maydawn it was. 
When I walk'd forth upon the glittering grass. 
And wept I knew not why ; until there rose 
From the near school-room, voices, that alas ! 
Were but one echo from a world of woes, 
T-he harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 

And then I dasp'd my hands and look'd around — 
But none was near to mock my streaming eyes. 
Which pour'd the warm drops on the sunny 

ground — 
So without shame, I spake : — " I will be wise, 
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies 
Such power ; for I grow weary to behold 
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize 
Without reproach or check." I then controU'd 
My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and 

bold. 

And from that hour did I with earnest thought 
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore ; 
Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught 
I cared to learn, but from that secret store 
Wrought link'd armour for my soul, before 
It might walk forth to war among mankind ; 
Thus power and hope were strengthen'd more 

and more 
Within me, till there came upon my mind 
A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. 

Alas, that love should be a blight and snare 
To those who seek all sympathies in one ! — 
Such once I sought in vain ; then black despair, 
The shadow of a starless night, was thrown 
Over the world in which I moved alone : — 
Yet never found I one not false to me. 
Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone 
Which crush'd and withcr'd mine, that could not 
Aught but a lifeless clog until revived by thee, [be 



Thou friend, whose presence on my wintery heart 
Fell like bright spring upon some herbless plain ; 
How beautiful and calm, and free thou wert 
In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain 
Of custom thou didst burst and rend in twain, 
And walk'd as free as light the clouds among. 
Which many an envious slave then breathed in 

vain 
From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung 
To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it 

long'. 

No more alone through the world's wilderness, 
Although I trod the paths of high intent, 
I journcy'd now : no more companioidess, 
Where solitude is like despair, I went. — 
There is the wisdom of a stern content. 
When poverty can blight the just and good, 
When infamy dares mock the innocent. 
And cherish'd friends turn with the multitude 
To tramj^le : this was ours, and We unshaken stood ! 

Now has descended a serener hour. 

And with inconstant fortune friends return ; 

Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the 

power. 
Which says : — let scorn be not repaid with scorn. 
And from thy side two gentle babes are born 
To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we 
Most fortunate beneath life's beaming morn ; 
And these delights, and thou, have been to me 
The parents of the song I consecrate to thee. 

Is it that now my inexperienced fingers 
But strike the prelude to a loftier strain 1 
Or must the lyre on which my spirit lingers 
Soon pause in silence ne'er to sound again. 
Though it miaht shake the anarch Custom'sreign, 
And charm the minds of men to Truth's own sway, 
Holier than was Amphion's? it would fain 
Rcpl}' in hope — but I am worn away, [P^'^y. 

And death and love are yet contending for their 

And what art thou ] I know, but dare not speak : 
Time may interpret to his silent years. 
Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek. 
And in the light thine ample forehead wears. 
And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears, 
And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy 
Is whisper'd to subdue my fondest fears : 
And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see 
A lamp of vestal fire burning internally. 

They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth. 
Of glorious parents, thou aspiring child. 
I wonder not — for one then left this earth 
Whose life was like a setting planet mild. 
Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled 
Of its departing glory ; still her fame [wild 

Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and 
Which shake these latter days ; and thou canst 
claim 
The shelter from thy sire, of an immortal name. 

One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit, 
Which was the echo of three thousand years; 
And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it, 



276 



PEKCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



As some lone man, who in a desert hears 
The music of his home : — unwonted fears 
Fell on the pale oppressors of our race, 
And faith and custom and low-thoughted cares, 
Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space [place, 

Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling- 
Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind ! 
If there must be no response to my cry — 
If men must rise and stamp with fury blind 
On his pure name who loves them, — thou and I, 
Sweet friend ! can look from our tranquillity 
Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night, — 
Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by, 
Which wrap them from the foundering seaman's 
sight, _ _ [light. 

That burn from year to year with unextinguished 



FROM 



ALASTOR, OR THE SPIRIT OF 
SOLITUDE." 



Thetie was a poet, whose untimely tomb 
No human hands with pious reverence rear'd 
But the charm'd eddies of autumnal winds 
Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid 
Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness; 
A lovely youth, — no mourning maiden deck'd 
With weeping flowers, or white cypress wreath, 
The lone couch of his everlasting sleep : — 
Gentle and brave, and generous, — no lorn bard 
Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh : 
He lived, he died, he sang, in solitude. 
Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes, 
And virgins, as unknown he past, have pined 
And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. 
The fire of those orbs has ceased to burn, 
And silence, too enamour'd of that voice, 
Locks its mute music in her rugged cell. 

By solemn vision, and bright silver dream. 
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight 
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air 
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. 
The fountains of divine philosophy 
Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great, 
Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past 
In truth, or fible consecrates, he felt 
And knew. When early youth had past, he left 
His cold fireside and alienated home 
To seek strange truths in undiscover'd lands. 
Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness 
Has lured his fearful steps ; and he has bought 
With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, 
His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps 
He like a shadow has pursued, where'er 
The red volcano over-canopies 
Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice 
With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes 
On black bare pointed islets ever beat 
With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves, 
Rugged and dark, winding among the springs 
Of fire and poison, inaccessible 
To avarice or pride, their starry domes 
Of diamond and of gold expand above 
Numberless and immeasurable halls, 



Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines 
Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite. 
Nor had that scene of ampler majesty 
Than gems or gold, the varying of heaven 
And the green earth lost in his heart its claims 
To love and wonder; he would linger long 
In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, 
Until the doves and squirrels would partake 
From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, 
Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks; 
And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er 
The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend 
Her ti.mid steps to gaze upon a form 
More graceful than her own. 

His wandering step. 
Obedient to high thoughts, has visited 
The awful ruins of the days of old : 
Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste 
Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers 
Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, 
Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange 
Sculptured on alabaster obelisk. 
Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx, 
Dark Ethiopia in her desert hills 
Conceals. Among the ruined temples there. 
Stupendous columns, and wild images 
Of more than man, where marble demons watch 
The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men 
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around. 
He linger'd, poring in memorials 
Ofthe world'syouth; through the long burning day 
Gazed in those speechless shapes, nor,when themoon 
Fill'd the mysterious halls with floating shades 
Suspended he that task, but ever gazed 
And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind 
Flash'd like strong inspiration, and he saw 
The thrilling secrets of the birth of time. 



ALASTOR AND THE SWAN. 

At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore 
He paused, a wide and melancholy waste 
Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged 
His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, 
Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. 
It rose as he approach'd, and with strong wings 
Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course 
High over the immeasurable main. 
His eyes pursued its flight. — " Thou hast a home, 
Beautiful bird ! thou voyagest to thine home, 
Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck 
With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes 
Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. 
And what am I that I should linger here. 
With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, 
Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned 
To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers 
In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven 
That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile 
Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. 
For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly 
Its precious charge, and silent death exposed, 
Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure, 
With doubtful smilemockingitsownstrange charms. 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



277 



FROM "THE REVOLT OF ISLAM." 

It was a temple, such as mortal hand 
Has never built, nor ecstasy nor dream 
Rear'd in the cities of enchanted land : 
'T was likest heaven, ere yet day's purple stream 
Ebbs o'er the western forest, while the gleam 
Of the unrisen moon among the clouds 
Is gathering, — when with many a golden beam 
The thronging constellations rush in crowds, 
Paving with fire the sky and the Marmoreal floods. 

liike what may be conceived of this vast dome, 
When from the depths which thought can seldom 

pierce. 
Genius beholds it rise, his native home, 
Girt by the deserts of the universe ; 
Yet, nor in paintings light, or mightier verse, 
Or sculpture's marble language, can invest 
That shape to mortal sense, — such glooms immerse 
That incommunicable sight, and rest 
Upon the labouring brain, and overburden'd breast. 

Winding among the lawny islands fair, 
Whose blossomy forests starr'd the shadowy deep. 
The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair 
Its fretwork in the crystal sea did sleep, 
Encircling that vast fane's aerial heap : 
We disembark'd, and through a portal wide 
We past, — whose roof, of moonstone, carved, did 

keep 
A glimmering o'er the forms on every side, 
Sculptures like life and thought ; immovable, deep- 
eyed. 

We came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof 
Was diamond, which had drunk the lightning's 

sheen 
In darkness, and now pour'd it through the woof 
Of spell-enwoven clouds hung there to screen 
Its blinding splendour, through such veil was seen 
That work of subtlest power divine and rare ; 
Orb above orb, with starry shapes between. 
And horned moons, and meteors strange and fair, 
On night-black columns poised — one hollow he- 
misphere ! 

Ten thousand columns in that quivering light 
Distinct, — between whose shafts wound far away 
The long and labyrinthine aisles more bright 
With their own radiance than the heaven of day ; 
And on the jasper walls around there lay 
Paintings, the poesy of mightiest thought, 
Which did the spirit's history displaj' ; 
A tale of passionate change, divinely taught, 
Which in their winged dance unconscious genii 
wrought. 

Beneath there sate on many a sapphire throne 

The great, who had departed from mankind ; 

A mighty senate ; — some whose white iiair shone 

Like mountain snow, mild, beautiful, and blind. 

Some, female forms, whose gestures beam'd with 
mind ; 

And ardent youths, and children bright and fair ; 

And some had lyres, whose strings were inter- 
twined 



With pale and clinging flames, which ever there 
Walk'd, faint yet thrilling sounds, that pierced the 
crystal air. 

One seat was vacant in the midst, a throne 
Rear'd on a pyramid, like sculptured flame 
Distinct, with circling steps, which rested on 
Their own deep fire — soon as the woman came 
Into that hall, she shrick'd the spirit's name 
And fell; and vanish'd slowly from the sight. 
Darkness arose from hor dissolving frame, 
Which gathering fill'd that dome of woven light. 
Blotting its sphered stars with supernatural night. 

Then first, two glittering lights were seen to glide 
In circles on the amethystine floor, 
Small serpent eyes wailing from side to side, 
Like meteors on a river's grassy shore. 
They round each other roU'd, dilating more 
And more, then rose commingling into one. 
One clear and mighty planet, hanging o'er 
A cloud of deepest shadow, which was thrown 
Atlrwart the glowing steps, and the crystalline 
throne. 

The cloud which rested on that cone of flame 
Was cloven ; beneath the planet sate a form, 
Fairer than tongue can speak, or thought may 

frame. 
The radiance of whose limbs rose-like and warm 
Flow'd forth, and did with softest light inform 
The shadowy dome, the sculptures and the state 
Of those assembled shapes — with clinging charm, 
Sinking upon their hearts and mine. He sate 
Majestic, yet most mild — calm, yet compassionate. 



HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 

Thk awful shadow of some unseen power 
Floats though unseen among us ; visiting 
This various world with as inconstant wing 

As summer winds that creep from flower to flower; 

Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain 
shower, 
It visits with inconstant glance 
Each human heart and countenance; 

Like hues and harmonies of evening. 
Like clouds in starlight widely spread, 
Like memory of music fled. 
Like aught that for its grace may be 

Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 

Spirit of beauty, that dost consecrate 

With thine ovi'n hues all thou dost shine upon 
Of human fliought or form, where art thou gone 1 

MHiy dost thou pass away and leave our state, 

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate 1 
Ask why the sunlight not for ever 
M^eaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river; 

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown; 
Why fear and drcatii and death and birth 
Cast on the daylight of this earth 
Such gloom, why man has such a scope 

For love and hate, despondency and hope 1 
2A 



278 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



No voice from some sublimer world hath ever 
To sage or poet these responses given : 
Therefore the names of demon, ghost, and heaven, 

Remain the records of their vain endeavour : 

Frail spells, whose utter'd charm might not avail 
to sever, 
From all we hear and all we see, 
Doubt, chance, and mutability. 

Thy light alone, hke mist o'er mountains driven, 
Or music by the night wind sent 
Through strings of some still instrument, 
Or moonlight on a midnight stream, 

Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 

Love, hope, and self-esteem, like clouds, depart 
And come, for some uncertain moments lent. 
Man were immortal, and omnipotent, 

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, 

Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his 
heart. 
Thou messenger of sympathies 
That wax and wane in lover's eyes ; 

Thou, that to human thought art nourishment, 
Like darkness to a dying flame ! 
Depart not as thy shadow came : 
Depart not, less the grave should be, 

Like life and fear, a dark reality. 

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped 

Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin. 

And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead, [fed : 
I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is 

I was not heard : I saw them not : 

When musing deeply on the lot 
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing 

All vital things that wake to bring 

News of birds and blossoming, 

Sudden, thy shadow fell on me : 
I shriek'd, and clasp 'd my hands in ecstasy ! 

I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers 

To thee and thine : have I not kept the vow 1 
With beating heartandstreamingeyes,evennow 

I call the phantoms of a thousand hours 

Eacii from his voiceless grave : they have in vision'd 
bowers 
Of studious zeal or loves delight 
Outwatch'd with me the envious night: 

They know that never joy illumed my brow, 
Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free 
This world from its dark slavery, 
That thou. Oh awful loveliness, 

Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. 

The day becomes more solemn and serene 

When noon is past : there is a harmony 

In autumn, and a lustre in its sky. 
Which through the summer is not heard or seen. 
As if it could not be, as if it had not been ! 

Thus let thy power, which like the truth 

Of nature on my passive youth 
Descended, to my onward life supply 

Its calm, to one who worships thee. 

And every form containing thee. 

Whom, spirit fair, thy spells did bind 
To fear himself, and love all human kind. 



SONG. 

Rarklt, rarely, comest thou. 

Spirit of delight ! 
Wherefore hast thou left me no\^ 

Many a day and night T 
Many a weary night and day 
'T is since thou art fled away. 

How shall ever one like me 

Win thee back again ? 
With the joyous and the free 

Thou wilt scofl' at pain. 
Spirit false ! thou hast forgot 
All but those who need thee not. 

As a lizard with the shade 

Of a trembling leaf. 
Thou with sorrow art dismay'd ; 

Even the sighs of grief 
Reproach thee, that thou art not near, 
And reproach thou wilt not hear. 

Let me set my mournful ditty 

To a merry measure, 
Thou wilt never coiiie for pity. 

Thou wilt come for pleasure. 
Pity, then, will cut away 
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. 

I love all that thou lovest, 

Spirit of delight I 
The fresh earth in new leaves drest. 

And the starry night ; 
Autumn evening, and the morn 
When the golden mists are born. 

I love snow, and all the forms 

Of the radiant frost : 
I love waves, and winds, and storms, 

Every thing almost 
Which is nature's, and may be 
Untainted by man's misery. 

I love tranquil solitude. 

And such society 
As is quiet, wise, and good ; 

Between thee and me 
What diiference ? but thou dost possess 
The things I seek, not love them less. 

I love Love — though he has wings, 

And like light can flee, 
But, above all other things. 

Spirit, I love thee — 
Thou art love and life ! Oh come. 
Make once more my heart thy home. 



DEATH AND SLEEP. 

How wonderful is Death, 
Death and his brother Sleep ! 

One, pale as yonder waning moon. 
With lips of lurid blue; 

The other, rosy as the morn 

When throned on ocean's wave, 
It Mushes o'er the world : 

Yet both so passing wonderful ! 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



279 



A PICTURE. 

How beautiful this night ! the balmiest sigh 
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, 
Were discord to the speaking quietude [vault, 
That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon 
Studded with stars unutterably bright, [rolls, 

Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur 
Seems like a canopy which love has spread 
Above the sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, 
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow ; 
Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend. 
So stainless, that their white and glittering spires 
Tinge not the moon's pure beam ; yon castled steep, 
Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower 
So idly, that 'rapt fancy deemeth it 
A metaphor of peace ; — all form a scene 
Where musing solitude might love to lift 
Her soul above this sphere of earthliness ; 
Where silence undisturb'd might watch alone. 
So cold, so bright, so still ! The orb of day. 
In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field 
Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath 
Steals o'er the unruffled deep ; the clouds of eve 
Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day ; 
And vesper's image on the western main 
Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes : 
Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, 
Roll o'er the blackened waters ; the deep roar 
Of distant thunder mutters awfully ; 
Tempest unfolds its pinions o'er the gloom 
That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend. 
With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey ; 
The torn deep yawns — the vessel finds a grave 
Beneath its jagged gulf. 

Ah ! whence yon glare 
That fircK the arch of heaven 1 — that dark red stnoke 
Blotting the silver moon 1 The stars are quench'd 
In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow 
Gleams faintly throughthe gloom thatgathersround! 
Hark to that roar, whose swift and deafening peals 
In countless echoes through the mountains ring, 
Startling pale midnight on her starry tlirone ! 
Now swells the intermingling din ; the jar. 
Frequent and frightful, of the bursting bomb; 
The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout. 
The ceaseless clangour, and the rush of men 
Inebriate with rage ! — Loud and more loud 
The discord grows ; till pale death shuts the scene. 
And o'er the conqueror and the conquer'd draws 
His cold and bloody shroud. Of all the men 
Whom day's departing hedm saw blooming there. 
In proud and vigorous health — of all the hearts 
'J'hat beat with anxious life at sunset there — 
How few survive, how few are beating now ! 
All is deep silence, like the fearful cahn 
That slumbers in the storm's portentous pa\isc ; 
Save when the frantic wail of widow'd love 
Comes shuddering on the blast, or the f>int moan 
With which some soul hursts from the frame of clay 
Wrapt round its struggling powers. 

The gray morn 
Dawns on thomournfulscene; the sulphurous s.noke 
Before the icv wind slow rolls away. 
And the bright be'ains of frosty morning dance 



Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood, 

Even to the forest's depth, and scatter'd arms, 

And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments 

Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path 

Of the outsallying victors : far behind 

Black ashes note where their proud city stood. 

Within yon forest is a gloomy glen — 

Each tree which guards its darkness from the day 

Waves o'er a warrior's tomb. 



SPRING. 

The blasts of autumn drive the winged seeds 
Over the earth, — next come the snows, and rain, 
And frost, and storms, which dreary winter leads 
Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train ; 
Behold ! Spring sweeps over the world again, 
Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings ; 
Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain, 
And music on the waves and woods she flings, 
And love on all that lives,and calm on lifeless things. 

O spring ! of hope, and love, and youth, and glad- 
ness, 
Wind-wing'd emblem ! brightest, best, and fairest! 
Whence comest thou, when with dark winter's 

sadness 
The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharestl 
Sister of joy ! thou art the child who wearest 
Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet; 
Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest 
Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle 
feet [sheet. 

Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding- 
Virtue, and hope, and love, like light and heaven, 
Surround the world. We are their chosen slaves. 
Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven 
Truth's deathless germs to thought's remotest 

caves 1 
Lo, winter comes ! — the grief of many graves. 
The frost of death, the tempest of the sword, 
The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves 
Stagnate like ice at faith, the enchanter's word, 
And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorr'd. 

The seeds are sleeping in the soil : meanwhile 
The tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey ; 
Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile 
Because they cannot speak ; and, day by day. 
The moon of wasting science wanes away 
Among her stars, and in that darkness vast 
The sons of earth to their foul idols pray. 
And gray priests triumph, and like blight or blast 
A shade of selfish care o'er human looks is cast. 

This is the winter of the world ; — and here 
We die, even as the winds of autumn fade. 
Expiring in the frore and foggy air. — [made 
Behold ! Spring comes, though we must pass, who 
The promise of its birth, — even as the shade 
Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings 
The future, a broad sunrise; thus array'd 
As with the plumes of overshadowing wings, 
From its dark gulf of chains, earth like an eagle 
springs. 



280 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



FROM ADONAIS: AN ELEGY ON THE 
DEATH OF JOHN KEATS. 

He lives, he wakes — 'tis death is dead, not he ; 
Mourn not for Adonais. Thou young dawn. 
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee 
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone ; 
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan I 
Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou air, 
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown 
O'er the abandon'd earth, now leave it bare 
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair ! 

He is made one with Nature : there is heard 
His voice in all her music, from the moan 
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird ; 
He is a presence to be felt and known 
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone. 
Spreading itself where'er that power may move 
Which has withdrawn his being to its own ; 
Which wields the world with never-wearied love, 
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 

He is a portion of the loveliness 
Which once he made more lovely : he doth bear 
His part, while the one spirit's plastic stress 
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling 

there 
All new successions to the forms they wear; 
Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight 
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; 
And bursting in its beauty and its might 
From trees and beasts and men, into the Heaven's 

light. 

The splendours of the firmament of time 
May be eclipsed, but are extinguish'd not; 
Like stars to their appointed height they climb, 
And death is a low mist which cannot blot 
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought 
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair. 
And love and life contend in it, for what 
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there 
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. 

The inheritors of unfulfiU'd renown 

Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal 

thought. 
Far in the unapparent. Chatterton 
Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 
Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought 
And as he fell, and as he lived and loved. 
Sublimely mild, a spirit without spot. 
Arose ; and Lucan, by his death approved : 
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. 

And many more, whose names on earth are dark, 
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die 
So long as fire outlives the parent spark, 
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 
" Thou art become as one of us," they cry ; 
" It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long 
Swung blind in unascended majesty, 
Silent, alone amid a heaven of song. 
Assume thy winged throne, thou vesper of our 
throng." 



THE SERPENT IS SHUT OUT FROM 
PARADISE. 

The serpent is shut out from paradise. 

The wounded deer must seek the herb no more 

In which its heart-cure lies : 
The widow'd dove must cease to haunt a bower. 
Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs 

Fled in the April hour. 
I too must seldom seek again 
Near happy friends a mitigated pain. 

Of hatred I am proud, — with scorn content ; 
Inditierence, that once hurt me, now is grown 

Itself indifferent. 
But, not to speak of love, pity alone 
Can break a spirit already more than bent. 

The miserable one 
Turns the mind's poison into food, — 
Its medicine is tears, — its evil good. 

Therefore if now I see you seldomer, 
Dear, gentle friend ! know that I only fly 

Your looks, because they stir 
Griefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot 

die : 
The very comfort that they minister 

I scarce can bear, yet I, 
So deeply is the arrow gone. 
Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn. 

When I return to my cold home, you ask 
Why I am not as I have ever been. 

You spoil me for the task 
Of acting a forced part on life's dull scene, — 
Of wearing on my brow the idle mask 

Of author, great or mean. 
In the world's carnival I sought 
Peace thus, and but in you I found it not. 

Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lot 
With various flowers, and every one still said, 

" She loves me loves me not." 

And if this meant a vision long since fled — 
If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought — 

If it meant — but I dread 
To speak what you may know too well : 
Still there was truth in the sad oracle. 

The crane o'er seas and forests seeks her home ; 
No bird so wild but has its quiet nest. 

Whence it no more would roam ; 
The sleepless billows on the ocean's breast 
Burst like a bursting heart, and die in peace, 

And thus at length find rest. 
Doubtless there is a place of y)eace 
Where my weak heart and all its throbs shall cease. 

I ask'd her, yesterday, if she believed 
That I bad resolution. One who had 

Would ne'er have thus relieved 
Hisheartwith words, — but what his judgment bade 
Would do, and leave the scorner unreprieved. 

These verses are too sad 
To send to you, but that I know, 
Happy yourself, you feel another's wo. 



= — =^1 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 281 


LIBERTY. 


Where pale as corpses newly risen. 




Women, children, young, and old, 


What art thou, Freedom 7 Oh ! could slaves 


Groan for pain, and weep for cold ; 


Answer from their living graves 


From the haunts of daily life. 


This demand, tyrants would Hee 


Where is waged the daily strife 


Like a dream's dim imagery. 


With common wants and common cares. 


Thou art not, as impostors say, 


Which sow the human heart with tares. 


A shadow soon to pass away, 


Lastly, from the palaces, 


A superstition, and a name 


Where the murmur of distress 


Echoing from the cave of Fame. 


Echoes, like the distant sound 


For the labourer thou art bread 


Of a wind, alive around ; 


And a comely table spread, 


Those prison-halls of wealth and fashion, 


From his daily labour come, 


M'here some few feel such compassion 


In a neat and happy home. 


For those who groan, and toil, and wail, 


Thou art clothes, and fire, and food 


As must make their brethren pale; 


For the trampled multitude : 


Ye who suffer woes untold. 


No — in countries that are free 


Or to feel, or to behold 


Such starvation cannot he, 


Your lost country bought and sold 


As in England now we see. 


With a price of blood and gold. 


To the rich thou art a check ; 


Let a vast assembly be. 


When his foot is on the neck 


And with great solemnity 


Of his victim, thou dost make 


Declare with ne'er said words, that ye 


That he treads upon a snake. 


Are, as God has made ye, free ! 


Thou art Justice — ne'er for gold 


Be your strong and simple words 


May thy righteous laws be sold, 


Keen to wound as sharpen'd swords. 


As laws are in England : — tliou 


And wide as targes let them be. 


Shieldest alike the high and low 


With their shade to cover ye. 


Tliou art Peace — never by thee 


liCt the tyrants pour around 


Would blood and treasure wasted be. 


With a quick and startling sound, 


As tyrants wasted them, when all 


Like the loosening of a sea, 


lieagued to quench thy flame in Gaul. 


Troops of arm'd emblazonry. 


What if English toil and blood 


Let the charged artillery drive, 


Was pour'd forth, even as a flood ! 


Till the dead air seems alive 


It availed, () Liberty ! 


With the clash of clanging wheels, 


To dim, but not extinguish thee ! 


And the tramp of horses' heels. 


Thou art Love : the rich have kist 


Let the fixed bayonet 


Thy feet, and like him following Christ, 


Gleam with sharp desire to wet 


Given their substance to the free, 


Its bright point in English blood. 


And through the rough world follow'<l thee. 


Looking keen as one for food. 


Oh turn tlieir wealth to arms, and make 


Let the horseman's scimitars 


War for thy beloved sake. 


Wheel and flash, like sjjhereless stars. 


On wealth and war and fraud ; whence they 


Thirsting to eclipse their burning 


Drev? the power which is their prey. 


In a sea of death and mourning. 


Science, and poetry, and thought, 


Stand ye, calm and resolute. 


Are thy lamps ; they make the lot 


liike a forest close and mute, 


Of the dwellers in a cot 


With folded arms, and looks which are 


Such, they curse their maker not. 


Weapons of an unvanquish'd war. 


Spirit, patience, gentleness, 


And let panic, who outspeeds 


All that can adorn and bless, 


The career of armed steeds. 


Art thou : let deeds, not words, express 


Pass, a disregarded shade. 


Thine exceeding loveliness. 


Through your phalanx undismay'd. 


Let a great assembly be 


Let the laws of your ov^'n land. 


Of tlie fearless and the free, 


Good or ill, between ye stand, 


On some spot of English ground, 


Hand to hand, and foot to foot. 


Where the plains stretch wide around. 


Arliiters of the dispute. 


Let the blue sky overhead. 


The old laws of England — they 


The green earth, on which ye tread, 


Whose reverend heads with age are gray, 


All that must eternal be, 


Children of a wiser day ; 


Witness the solemnity. 


And whose solemn voice must be 


From the corners uttermost 


Thine own echo — Liberty ! 


Of the bounds of English coast ; 


On those who first should violate 


From every hut, village, and town, 


Such sacred heralds in their state, 


Where those who live and suffer, moan 


Rest the blood that must ensue ; 


For others' misery, or their own : 


And it will not rest on you. 


From the workhouse and the prison, 


And if then the tyrants dare, 


.36 


2a2 



282 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



Let them ride among you there ; 
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew ; 
What they like, that let them do. 
With folded arms and steady eyes, 
And little fear, and less surprise, 
Look upon them as thoy slay, 
Till their rage has died away : 
Then they will return with shame, 
To the place from which they came. 
And the blood thus shed will speak 
Li hot blushes on their cheek : 

Every woman in the land 
Will point at them as they stand — 
They will hardly dare to greet 
Their acquaintance in the street ; 
And the bold, true warriors, 
Who have hugg'd danger in the wars, 
Wdl turn to those who would be free. 
Ashamed of such base company : 
And that slaughter to the nation 
Sliall steam up like inspiration. 
Eloquent, oracular, 
A volcano heard afar : 
And these words shall then become 
Like oppression's thunder'd doom, 
Riuging through each heart and brain. 
Heard again — again — again ! 
Rise like lions after slumber 
Li unvanquishable number I 
Shake your chains to earth, like dew 
Which in sleep had fallen on you: 
Ye are many — they are few ! 



A LAMENT. 

SwiFTETi far than summer's flight. 
Swifter far than youth's delight, 
Swifter far than happy night. 

Art thou come and gone : 
As the earth when leaves are dead. 
As the night when sleep is sped. 
As the heart when joy is fled, 

I am left alone, alone. 

The swallow summer comes again, 
The owlet night resumes her reign. 
But the wild swan youth is fain 

To fly with thee, false as thou. 
My heart each day desires the morrow. 
Sleep itself is turn'd to sorrow, 
Vainly would my winter borrow 

Sunny leaves from any bough. 

Lilies for a bridal bed, 
Roses for a matron's head, 
Violets for a maiden dead, 

Pansies let my flowers be : 
On the living grave I bear. 
Scatter them without a tear. 
Let no friend, however dear, 

Waste one hope, one fear for me. 



THE SUN IS WARM, THE SKY IS CLEAR. 

The sun is warm, the sky is clear. 

The waves are dancing fast and bright, 
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear 

The purple moon's transparent light : 
The breath of the moist air is light, 

Around its unexpanded buds ; 
Like many a voice of one delight, 

The winds, the birds, the ocean-floods, 
The city's voice itself is soft, like solitude's. 

I see the deep's untrampled floor 

With green and purple seaweeds strown : 
I see the waves upon the shore, 

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown : 
I sit upon the sands alone, 

The lightning of the noontide ocean 
Is (lashing round me, and a tone 

Arises from its measured motion, 
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion. 

Alas ! I have nor hope nor health, 

Nor peace within nor calm around. 
Nor that content, surpassing wealth, 

The sage in meditation found, 
And vvalk'd with inward glory crown'd — 

Nor fxme, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. 
Others I see whom these surround — 

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure : 
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. 

Yet now despair itself is mild, 

Even as the winds and waters are; 
I could lie down like a tired child. 

And weep away the life of care 
Which I have borne and yet must bear, 

Till death, like sleep, might steal on me, 
And I might feel in the warm air 

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 

Some might lament that I were cold. 

As I, when this sweet day is gone. 
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old. 

Insults with this untimely moan; 
They might lament — for I am one 

Whom men love not — and yet regret. 
Unlike this day, which, when the sun 

Shall on its stainless glory set, 
Will linger, though enjoy 'd, like joy in memory yet. 



THE HOURS, FROM PROMETHEUS. 

Caiis drawn by rainbow-winged steeds, 
Which trample the dim winds : in each there stands 
A wild-evi'd charioteer, urging their flight. 
Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there, 
And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars: 
Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink 
With eager lips the wind of their owri speed, 
As if the thing they loved fled on before, [locks 
And now, even now, they clasp'd it. Their bright 
Stream like a comet's flashing hair : they all 
Sweep onward. 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



283 



TO A SKYLARK. 

Hati, to thee, blithe spirit! 

Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 

Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 

Higher still and higher, 

From the earth thou springest 

Like a cloud of fire ; 

The blue deep thou wingest. 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 

In the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun, 
O'er which clouds are brightening, 

Thou dost float and run ; 
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 

The pale purple even 

Melts around thy flight; 
Like a star of heaven, 
In the broad daylight 
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. 

Keen as are the arrows 

Of that silver sphere, 
Whose intense lamp narrows 

In the white dawn clear, 
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 

All the earth and air 

With thy voice is loud, 
As, when night is bare. 
From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over- 
flow'd. 

What thou art we know not ; 

What is most like thee 1 
From rainbow clouds there flow not 
Drops so bright to see. 
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 

Like a poet hidden 

In the light of thought. 
Singing hymns unbidden. 

Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with ho[)es and fears it heeded not : 

Like a high-born maiden 

In a palace tower. 
Soothing her love-laden 
Soul in secret hour 
With music sweet as love, which overflows her 
bower: 

Like a glow-worm golden 

In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbeholden 
Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from 
the view : 

Like a rose embower'd 

In its own green leaves. 
By warm winds deflower'd 
Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged 
thieves. 



Sound of vernal showers 

On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awaken'd flowers, 
All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 

Teach us, sprite or bird, 

What sweet thoughts are thine : 

I have never heard 
Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 

Chorus Hymeneal, 

Or triumphal chant, 
Match'd with thine would be all 
But an empty vaunt — 
A thing wherehi we feel there is some hidden want. 

What objects are the fountains 

Of thy happy strain 1 
What fields, or waves, or mountains 1 
What shapes of sky or plain ] [pain 1 
What love of thine own kind 1 what ignorance of 

With thy clear keen joyance 

Languor cannot be : 
Shadow of annoyance 
Never came near thee : 
Thou lovest; but never knew love's sad satiety. 

W^aking or asleep. 

Thou of death must deem 
Things more true and deep 
Than we mortals dream. 
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? 

We look before and after, 

And pine for what is not: 
Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught; [thought. 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest 

Yet if we could scorn 

Hate, and pride, and fear ; 
If we were things horn 

Not to shed a tear, 
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 



LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY. 

The fountains mingle with the river, 

And the rivers with the ocean. 
The winds of heaven mix for ever 

With a sweet emotion ; 
Nothing in the world is single ; 

All things by a law divine 
In one another's being mingle — 

Why not I with thine 1 

See the mountains kiss high heaven. 

And the waves clasp one another; 
No sister flower would be forgiven 

If it disdain'd its brother : 
And the sunlight clasps the earth. 

And the moonbeams kiss the sea ;- 
What arc all these kissings worth, 

If thou kiss not me ■• 



284 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



THE CLOUD. 

I BRiXR fresh showers for the thirsthig flowers, 

From the seas and the streams ; 
I bear light shades for the leaves when laid 

In their noonday dreams. 
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 

The sweet buds every one, 
When rock'd to rest on their mother's breast, 

x\s she dances about the sun. 
I wield the flail of the lashing hail, 

And whiten the green plains under, 
And then again I dissolve it in rain. 

And laugh as I pass in thunder. 

I sift the snow on the mountains below. 

And their great pines groan aghast ; 
And all the night 'tis my pillow vvliite, 

While I sleep in the arms of the blast. 
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers. 

Lightning my pilot sits, 
In a cavern under is fetter'd the thunder, 

It struggles and howls at fits ; 
Over earth and ocean with gentle motion. 

This pilot is guiding me, 
Lured by the love of the genii that move 

In the depths of the purple sea ; 
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills. 

Over the lakes and the plains. 
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, 

The spirit he loves remains ; 
And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, 

Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes. 

And his burning plumes outspread. 
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, 

When the morning-star shines dead. 
As on the jag of a mountain crag. 

Which an earthquake rocks and swings. 
An eagle alit one moment may sit 

In the light of its golden wings. [beneath, 

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea 

Its ardours of rest and of love, 
And the crimson pall of eve may fall 

From the depth of heaven above. 
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, 

As still as a brooding dove. 

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden. 

Whom mortals call the moon. 
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, 

By the midnight breezes strewn ; 
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, 

Which only the angels hear, 
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof. 

The stars peep behind her and peer ; 
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, 

Like a swarm of golden bees. 
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, 

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas. 
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, 

Are each paved with the moon and these. 

I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone, 
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ; 



The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, 

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. 
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, 

Over a torrent sea. 
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, 

The mountains its columns be. 
The triumphal arch through which I march 

With hurricane, fire, and snow. 
When the powers of the air are chain'd to my chair, 

Is the million-colour'd bow ; 
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove. 

While the moist earth was laughing below. 

I am the daughter of earth and water. 

And the nursling of the sky : 
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ; 

I change, but I cannot die. 
For after the rain, when with never a stain. 

The pavilion of heaven is bare, [gleams, 

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex 

Build up the blue dome of air, 
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph. 

And out of the caverns of rain, [tomb. 

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the 

I arise and unbuild it again. 



STANZAS, 

WniTTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES. 

The sun is warm, the sky is clear. 

The waves are dancing fast and bright. 
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear 

The purple noon's transparent light. 
The breath of the moist air is light, 

Around its unexpanded buds; 
Like many a voice of one delight. 

The winds, the birds, the ocean floods. 
The city's voice itself is soft, like solitude's. 

I see the deep's untrampled floor 

With green and purple seaweeds strown : 
I see the waves upon the shore. 

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown : 
I sit upon the sands alone. 

The lightning of the noontide ocean 
Is flashing round me, and a tone 

Arises from its measured motion. 
How sweet ! did any heart now share in my emotion. 

Alas ! I have nor hope nor health. 

Nor peace within nor calm around, 
Nor that content surpassing wealth 

The sage in meditation found. 
And walk'd with inv\'ard glory crown'd — 

Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. 
Other I see whSm these surround — 

Smiling they live and call life pleasure ; — 
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. 

Yet now despair itself is mild. 

Even as the winds and waters are ; 

I could lie down like a tired child, 
And weep away the life of care 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 285 ' 


Which I have borne and yet must bear, 


While around the lash'd ocean. 


Till death like sleep might steal on me, 


Like mountains in motion, 


And I might feel in the warm air 


Is withdrawn and uplifted, 


My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 


Sunk, shatter'd, and shifted, 


Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 


To and fro. 


Some might lament that I were cold, 


IV. 


As I, when this sweet day is gone, 


In the court of the fortress 


Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, 


Beside the pale portress, 


Insults with this untimely moan : 


Like a blood-hound well beaten 


They might lauient — for I am one 


The bridegroom stands, eaten 


Whom men love not, — and yet regret, 


By shame ; 


Unlike this day, which, when the sun 


Shall on its stainless glory set, 


On the topmost watch-turret. 


ill linger, though esjoy'd, like joy in memory yet. 


As a death-boding spirit. 
Stands the gray tyrant father. 




To his voice the mad weather 
Seems tame ; 




THE FUGITIVES. 


And with curses as wild 




As ere clung to child. 


I. 


He devotes to the blast 


The waters are flashing, 


The best, loveliest, and last, 


The white hail is dashing. 


Of his name ! 


The hghtnings are glancing, 




The hoar-spray is dancing — 
Away ! 






The whirlwind is rolling, 


TO THE QUEEN OF MY HEART. 


The thunder is tolling. 


Shall we roam, my love, 
To the twilight grove. 

When the moon is rising bright ; 
Oh, I'll whisper there. 


The forest is swinging. 
The minister bells ringing — 
Come away ! 


The earth is like ocean, 


In the cool night-air. 


Wreck-strewn and in motion . 


What I dare not in broad day-light ! 


Bird, beast, man, and worm. 
Have crept out of the storm — 
Come away ! 


I'll tell thee a part 

Of the thoughts that start 

To being when thou art nigh ; 


II. 


And thy beauty, more bright 


" Our boat has one sail. 


Than the stars' soft light. 


And the helmsman is pale ; — 


Shall seem as a weft from the sky. 


A bold pilot I trow. 


When the pale moonbeam 
On tower and stream 


Who should follow us now, — 


Shouted he — 


Sheds a flood of silver sheen, 


And she cried : " Ply the oar ; 


How I love to gaze 


Put off gay ly from shore !" — 


As the cold ray strays 


As she spoke, bolts of death 


O'er thy face, my heart's throned queen ! 


Mix'd with hail, speck'd their path 


Wilt thou roam with me 


O'er the sea. 


To the restless sea. 


And from isle, tower, and rock, 


And linger upon the steep. 


The blue beacon cloud broke. 


And list to the flow 


Though dumb in the blast. 


Of the waves below 


The red cannon flash'd fast, 


How they toss and roar and leap 1 


From the lee. 


Those boiling waves 


III. 


And the storm that raves 


" And fear'st thou, and fear'st thou ■? 


At night o'er their foaming crest, 


And see'st thou, and hear'st thou 1 


Resemble the strife 


And drive we not free 


That, from earliest life. 


O'er the terrible sea, 


The passions have waged in my breast. 


I and thou V 


Oh, come then and rove 


One boat-cloak did cover 


To the sea or the grove. 


The loved and the lover — 


When the moon i-s shining bright, 


Their blood beats one measure, 


And I '11 whisper there. 


They murmur proud pleasure 


In the cool night-air. 


Soft and low ; — 


What I dare not in broad day-light. 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



Felicia. Dorothea Browne was born in 
Liverpool on the twenty-first of September, 
1793. Her childhood was passed among the 
wild mountain scenery of Wales, where the 
earliest and most constant of her studies was 
the greatest of poets. Shakspeare and na- 
ture — nature so sublime as that she daily 
gazed on — had their due influence in fashion- 
ing a mind v/hich had been created far superior 
to the common order of intellects, and before she 
was thirteen years of age Miss Browne had a 
printed collection of verses before the world. 
From this period to the end of her history she 
sent forth volume after volume, each surpass- 
ing its predecessor in tenderness and beauty. 

At nineteen she was married to Captain 
Hemans, of the Fourth Regiment. He was 
of an irritable temperament, and his health 
had been injured by the vicissitudes of a mili- 
tary life. They lived together unhappily for 
several years, when Captain Hemans left 
England for Italy, and never returned. Mrs. 
Hemans continued to reside with her mother 
and her sister. Miss Mary Anne Browne, 
now Mrs. Gray, a poetess of some reputation, 
near St. Asaph, in North Wales, where she 
devoted her attention to literature and to the 
education of her children, five sons, in whom 
all her affections from this time were centered. 
Here she wrote The Restoration of the Works 
of Art to Italy, Modern Greece, Translations 
from Camoens, Wallace, Dartmoor, The Scep- 
tic, Welsh Melodies, Historic Scenes, The 
Siege of Valencia, The Vespers of Palermo, 
The Forest Sanctuary, The Songs of the Af- 
fections, Records of Women, and the Lays 
of Many Lands, 

The death of her mother, in 1827, induced 
Mrs. Hemans to leave Wales and reside at 
Wavertree, near Liverpool. While here she 
made two visits to Scotland, and was warmly 
received by Jeffrey, Walter Scott, and 
the other eminent literary persons of the 
northern metropolis. On her return from her 
second tour in Scotland, she changed her resi- 
dence from Wavertree to Dublin, where she 
published her Hymns for Children, National 
Lyrics, and Songs for Music. 



Her domestic sorrows, and the earnestness 
with which she devoted herself to literary 
pursuits, had long before impaired her health ; 
and now her decline became rapid, and in- 
duced forebodings of death. Her poems, writ- 
ten in this period, were marked by a melan- 
choly despondency, yet with a Christian 
resignation. After an illness singularly pain- 
ful and protracted, she died on the sixteenth 
of May, 1835, in the forty-second year of her 
age, and was buried in the vault of St. Anne's, 
in Dublin. 

The most remarkable characteristics of Mrs. 
Hemans's poetry are a religious purity and a 
womanly delicacy of feeling, never exagge- 
rated, rarely forgotten. Writing less of love, 
in its more special acceptation, than most 
female poets, her poems are still unsurpassed 
in feminine tenderness. Devotion to God, and 
quenchless aifection for kindred, for friends, 
for the suffering, glow through all her writ- 
ings. Her sympathies were not universal. 
Tliey appear often to be limited by country, 
creed, or condition ; and she betrays a reve- 
rent admiration for rank, power, and historic 
renown. The trappings of royalty and nobi- 
lity are to her no tinsel, but bespeak merit, 
wisdom, greatness of soul; they imply virtue, 
and almost excuse vice. The panoply of war 
she deems a web of finest tissues ; the sword 
the minister of Justice, the avenger of Inno- 
cence : forgetful that it has more often availed 
to commit wrong than to redress wrong, to 
spread desolation than to arrest it. Yet as the 
poet of home, a painter of the affections, she 
was perhaps the most touching and beauti- 
ful writer of her age. The tone of her poetry 
is indeed monotonous ; it is pervaded by the 
tender sadness which for ever preyed upon 
her spirit, and made her an exile from society; 
but it is all informed with beauty, and rich with 
most apposite imagery and fine descriptions. 

Many editions of the works of Mrs. He- 
mans have appeared in this country, of which 
the best, indeed the only one that has any 
pretensions to completeness, is that of Lea 
and Blanchard, in seven volumes, with a pre- 
liminary notice by Mrs. Sigourney. 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



287 



JOAN OF ARC, IN RHEIMS. 

That was a joyous day in Rheims of old, 
When peal on peal of mighty music roll'd 
Forth from her throng'd cathedral ; while around, 
A multitude, whose billows made no sound, 
Chain'd to a hush of wonder, though elate 
With victory, listen'd at their temple's gate. 
And what was done within? — Within, the light 

Through the rich gloom of pictured windows 
flowing, 
Tinged with soft awfulness a stately sight, [ing 

The chivalry of France, their proud heads bow- 
In martial vassalage ! — while midst that ring, 
And shadow'd by ancestral tombs, a king 
Received his birthright's crown. For this the hymn 

Swell'd out like rushing waters, and the day 
With the sweet censer's misty breath grew dim, 

As through long aisles it floated o'er the array 
Of arms and sweeping stoles. But who, alone 
And unapproach'd, beside the altar-stone, [ing> 
With the white banner, forth like sunshine stream- 
And the gold helm, through clouds of fragrance 

gleamitig, 
Silent and radiant stood 1 — The helm was raised, 
And the fair face reveal'd, that upward gazed. 

Inteu'^ely worshipping: — a still, clear face 
Youthful, but brightly solemn ! — Woman's cheek 
And brow were there, in deep devotion meek, 

Yet glorified with inspiration's trace 
On its pure paleness; while, enthroned above, 
The pictured virgin, with her smile of love, 
Seem'd bending o'er her votaress. 'J'hat slight form! 
Was that the leader through the battle-storm? 
Had the soft light in that adoring eye 
Guided the warrior where the swords flash'd high? 
'Twas so, even so! — and thou, the shepherd's child, 
Joanne, the lowly dreamer of the wild ! 
Never before, and never since that hour, 
Hath woman, mantled with victorious power, 
Stood forth as thou beside the shrine didst stand, 
Holy amid the knighthood of the land ; 
And. beautiful with joy and with renown. 
Lift thy white banner o'er the olden crown, 
Ransom'd for France by thee ! 

The rites are done. 
Now let the dome with trumpet-notes be shaken, 
And bid the echoes of the tombs awaken. 

And come thou forth, that Heaven's rejoicing 
sun 
May give thee welcome from thine own blue skies, 

Dauarhfer of victory ! — A triumphant strain, 
A proud, rich stream of warlike melodies, 

Gush'd through the portals of the antique fane, 
And forth she came. Then rose a nation's sound. 
Oh ! what a power to bid the (piick heart bound 
The wind bears onward with the stormy cheer 
Man gives to glory on her high career ! 
Is there indeed such power! — far deeper dwells 
In one kind household voice, to reach the cells 
Whence happiness flows forth ! The shouts that 

fdl'd 
The hollow heaven tempestuously, were still'd 
One moment; and in that liricf pause, the tone 
As of a breeze that o'er her home had blown, 



Sank on the bright maid's heart. — "Joanne !" — 
Who spoke [grew 

Like those whose childhood with her childhood 
Under one roof? — "Joanne!" — that murmur broke 

With sounds of weeping forth ! — she turn'd — 
she knew 
Beside her, mark'd from all the thousands there, 
In the calm beauty of his silver hair, 
The stately shepherd ; and the youth, whose joy 
From his dark eye flash'd proudly; and the boy 
The youngest-born, that ever loved her best; 
" Father ! and ye, my brothers !" On the breast 
Of that gray sire she sank — and swiftly back, 
Even in an instant, to their native track [more — 
Her free thoughts flow'd. She saw the pomp no 
The plumes, the banners: — to her cabin-door, 
And to the Fairy's fountain in the glade. 
Where her young sisters by her side had play'd 
And to her hamlet's chapel, where it rose 
Hallowing the forest unto deep repose, 
Her spirit turn'd. The very wood-note, sung 

In early spring-time by the bird, which dwelt 
Where o'er her father's I'oof the beech-leaves hung, 

Was in her heart ; a music heard and felt, 
Winning her back to nature. She unbound 

The helm of many battles from her head. 
And, with lier bright locks bow'd to sweep the 
ground. 

Lifting her voice up, wept for joy, and said — 
" Bless me, my father, bless me ! and with thee, 
To the still cabin and the beechen-tree, 
Let me return !" 

Oh ! never did thine eye 
Through the green haunts of happy infancy 
Wander again, Joanne ! — too much of fame 
Had shed its radiance on thy peasant name ; 
And bought alone l\y gifts beyond all price. 
The trusting heart's repose, the paradise 
Of home with all it loves, doth fate allow 
The crown of glory unto woman's brow. 



THE AMERICAN FOREST GIRL. 

Wildly and mournfully the Indian drum 

On the deep hush of moonlight forests broke ; — 
"Sing us a death-song, for thine hour is come," — 

So the red warriors to their captive spoke. 
Still, and ami<lst those dusky forms alone, 

A youth, a fair-hair'd youth of England stood, 
Like a king's son ; though from his cheek had flown 

The mantling crimson of the island blood, 
And his press'd lips look'd marble. Fiercely bright, 
And high around him, blazed the fires of night, 
Rocking beneath the cedars to and fro, 
As the wind pass'd. and with a fitful glow 
I/iKhting the victim's face. But who could tell 
Of what within his secret heart befell, [thought 
Known but to Heaven that hour? — Perchance a 
Of his far home, then so intensely wrought 
That its full image, pictured to his eye 
On the dark ground of mortal agony, 
Ro'^c clear as day ! — and he might see the band 
Of his young sisters wandering hand in hand. 



288 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



Where the laburnum droop'd ; or haply binding 
The jasmine, up the door's low pillars winding ; 
Or, as day closed upon their gentle mirth, 
Gathering with braided hair around the hearth 
Where sat their mother ; — and that mother's face 
Its grave, sweet smile yet wearing in the place 
Where so it ever smiled ! Perchance the prayer 
Learn'd at her knee came back on his despair ; 
The blessing from her voice, the very tone [gone ! 
Of her "Good-night," might breathe from boyhood 
He started and look'd up : — thick cypress boughs 

Full of strange sound, waved o'er him, darkly red 
In the broad, stormy firelight; — savage brows, 

With tall plumes crested and wild hues o'er- 
spread 
Girt him like feverish phantoms ; and pale stars 
Look'd through the branches as through dungeon 

bars, 
Shedding no hope. He knew, he felt his doom — 
Oh ! what a tale to shadow with his gloom 
That happy hall in England ! Idle fear ! [hear 
Would the winds tell it! Who might dream or 
The secret of the forests 7 To the stake 

They bound him; and that proud young soldier 
His father's spirit in his breast to wake, [strove 

Trusting to die in silence ! He, the love 
Of many hearts ! — the fondly rear'd — the fair, 
Gladdening all eyes to see ! And fetter'd there 
He stood beside his death-pyre, and the brand 
Flamed up to light it in the chieftain's hand. 
He thought upon his God. Hush ! hark ! — a cry 
Breaks on the stern and dread solemnity, — 
A step hath pierced the ring! Who dares intrude 
On the dark hunters in their vengeful mood ; 
A girl — a young, slight girl — a fawn-like child 
Of green savannas and the leafy wild. 
Springing unmark'd till then, as some lone flower, 
Happy because the sunshine is its dower; 
Yet one that knew how early tears are shed, — 
For hers had mourn'd a playmate brother dead. 
She had sat gazing on the victim long. 
Until the pity of her soul grew strong; 
And, by its passion's deepening fervour sway'd, 
Even to the stake she rush'd, and gently laid 
His bright head on her bosom, and around 
His form her slender arms to shield it wound 
Like close Liannes ; then raised her glittering eye 
And clear-toned voice that said, " He shall not 

die !" 
" He shall not die !" — the gloomy forest thrill'd 

To that sweet sound. A sudden wonder fell 
On the fierce throng; and heart and hand were still'd, 

Struck down, as by the whisper of a spell. 
They gazed; their dark souls bow'd before the maid, 
She of the dancing step in wood and glade ! 
And, as her cheek flush'd through its olive hue, 
As her black tresses to the night-wind flew. 
Something o'ermaster'd them from that young mein; 
Something of heaven, in silence felt and seen ; 
And seeming, to their child-like faith, a token 
That the Great Spirit by her voice had spoken, 
They loosed the bonds that held theircaptive's breath: 
From his pale lips they took the cup of death : 
They quench'd the brand beneath the cypress tree; 
"Away," they cried, "young stranger, thou art free!" 



THE STRANGER IN LOUISIANA. 

We saw thee, O stranger, and wept ! 
We look'd for the youth of the sunny glance, 
Whose step was the fleetest in chase or dance ! 
The light of his eye was a joy to see. 
The path of his arrows a storm to flee ! 
But there came a voice from a distant shore: 
He was call'd — he is found 'midst his tribe no more ! 
He is not in his place when the night-fires burn, 
But we look for him still — he will yet return ! 
— His brother sat with a drooping brow 
In the gloom of the shadowing cypress bough, 
We roused him — we bade him no longer pine, 
For we heard a step — but the step was thine. 

We saw thee, O stranger, and wept ! 
We look'd for the maid of the mournful song. 
Mournful, though sweet — she hath left us long! 
We told her the youth of her love was gone. 
And she went forth to seek him — she pass'd alone; 
We hear not her voice when the woods are still. 
From the bower where it sang, like a silvery rill. 
The joy of her sire with her smile is fled. 
The winter is white on his lonely head, 
He hath none by his side when the wilds we track. 
He hath none when we rest — yet she comes not 

back ! 
We look'd for her eye on the feast to shine, 
For her breezy step — but the step was thine ! 

We saw thee, stranger, and wept ! 
We look'd for the chief who hath left the spear 
And the bow of his battles forgotten here ! 
We look'd for the hunter, whose bride's lament 
On the wind of the forest at eve is sent: 
We look'd for the first-born, whose mother's cry 
Sounds wild and shrill through the midnight sky ! 
— Where are they? — thou'rt seeking some distant 

coast — 
Oh, ask of them stranger ! — send back the lost ! 
Tell them we mourn by the dark-blue streams, 
Tell them our lives but of them are dreams ; 
Tell how we sat in the gloom to pine. 
And to watch for a step — but the step was thine ! 



LEAVE ME NOT YET. 

Lkave me not yet — through rosy skies from far, 
But now the song-birds to their nest return; 

The quivering image of the first pale star 
On the dim lake yet scarce begins to burn : 
Leave me not yet ! 

Not yet ! — oh, hark ! low tones from hidden streams, 
Piercing the shivery leaves, e'en now arise ; 

Their voices mingle not with daylight dreams, 
They are of vesper hymns and harmonies; 
Leave me not yet ! 

My thoughts are like those gentle sounds, dear love! 

By day shut up in their own still recess. 
They wait for dews on earth, for stars above. 

Then to breathe out their soul of tenderness ; 
Leave me not yet! 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



289 



THE TRAVELLER AT THE SOURCE 
OF THE NILE. 

Isr sunset's light o'er Ai'ric thrown, 

A wanderer proudly stood 
Beside the well-spring, deep and lone, 

Of Egypt's awful flood ; 
The cradle of that miglity birth, 
So long a hidden thing to earth. 

He heard its life's first murmuring sound, 

A low, mysterious tone ; 
A music sought, but never found 

By kings and warriors gone ; 
He listen'd — and his heart beat high — 
That was the song of victory ! 

The rapture of a conqueror's mood 

Rush'd burning through his frame. 

The depths of that green solitude 
Its torrents could n(3t tame. 

Though stillness lay, with eve's last smile, 

Round those calm fountains of the Nile. 

Night came with stars: — .across his soul 
There swept a sudden change. 

E'en at the pilgrim's glorious goal, 
A shadow dark and strange, 

Breathed from the thought, so swift to fall 

O'er triumph's hour — And is this all? 

No more than this ! — what seem'd it now 
First by that spring to stand 1 

A thousand streams of lovelier flow 
Bathed his own mountain land ! 

Whence, far o'er waste and ocean track, 

Their wild, sweet voices call'd him back. 

They call'd him back to many a glade. 
His childhood's haunt of play, 

Where brightly through the beechen shade 
Their waters glanced away; 

They call'd him, with their sounding waves, 

Back to his father's hills and graves. 

But, darkly mingling with the thought 

Of each familiar scene, 
Rose up a fearful vision, fraught 

With all that lay between, — 
The Arab's lance, the desert's gloom, 
The whirling sands, the red simoom ! 

Where was the glow of power and pride 1 

The spirit born to roam 1 
His weary heart within him died 

With yearnings for his home ; 

All vainly struggling to repress 
That gush of painful tenderness. 

He wept — the stars of Afric's heaven 

Beheld his bursting tears, 
E'en on that spot where fate had given 

The meed of toiling years. 
O happiness I how far we flee 
Thine own sweet paths in search of thee ! 
37 



THE PALM TREE. 

It waved not through an Eastern sky, 
Beside a fount of Araby ; 
It was not fann'd by southern breeze 
In some green isle of Indian seas. 
Nor did its graceful shadow sleep 
O'er stream of Afric, lone and deep. 

But fair the exiled palm-tree grew 
Midst foliage of no kindred hue ; 
Through the laburnum's dropping gold 
Rose the light shaft of orient mould, 
And Europe's violets, faintly sweet, 
Purpled the moss-beds at its feet. 

Strange look'd it there! — the willow .strcam'd 
Where silvery waters near it gleam'd ; 
The lime-bough lured the honey-bee 
To murmur by the desert's tree, 
And showers of snov^y roses made 
A lustre in its fan-like shade. 

There came an eve of festal hours — 
Rich music fiU'd that garden's bowers ; 
Lamps that from flowering branches hung. 
On sparks of dew soft colours flung, 
And bright forms glanced — a fairy show — 
Under the blossoms to and fro. 

But one, a lone one, midst the throng, 
Seem'd reckless of all dance or song: 
He was a youth of dusky mein. 
Whereon the Indian sun had been, 
Of crested brow, and long black hair — 
A stranger, like the palm-tree, there 

And slowly, sadly, moved his plumes. 
Glittering athwart the leafy glooms ; 
He pass'd the pale green olives by. 
Nor won the chestnut-flowers his eye ; 
But when to that sole palm he came, 
Then shot a rapture tiirough his frame ! 

To him, to him its rustling spoke. 

The silence of his soul it broke ! 

It whisper'd of his own bright isle, 

That lit the ocean with a smile; 

Ay, to his ear that native tone 

Had something of the sea-wave's moan ! 

His mother's cabin home, that lay 
Where feathery cocoas fringed the bay; 
The dashing of his brethren's oar, 
The conch-note heard along the shore ; — 
All through his wakening bosom swept. 
He clasp'd his country's tree and wept ! 

Oh ! scorn him not ! — the strength whereby 
The patriot girds himself to die, 
The unconquerable power, which fills 
The freeman battling on his hills, 
These have one fountain deep and clear — 
The same whence gush'd that child-like tear! 
2 B 



290 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



THE BRIDE'S FAREWELL. 

Why do I weep? — to leave the vine 

Whose clusters o'er me bend, — 
The myrtle — yet, oh ! call it mine ! — 

The flowers I loved to tend. 
A thousand thoughts of all things dear 

Like shadows o'er me sweep, 
I leave my sunny childhood here, 

Oh, therefore let me weep ! 

I leave thee, sister ! we have play'd 

Through many a joyous hour, 
Where the silvery green of the olive shade 

Hung dim o'er fount and bower. 
Yes, thou and I, by stream, by shore, 

In song, in prayer, in sleep. 
Have been as we may be no more — 

Kind sister, let me weep ! 

I leave thee, father! Eve's bright moon 

Must now light other feet, 
Witli tiie gather'd grapes, and the lyre in tune, 

Thy homeward step to greet. 
Thou in whose voice, to bless thy child, 

Lay tones of love so deep. 
Whose eye o'er all my youth hath smiled — 

I leave thee ! let me weep ! 

Mother ! I leave thee ! on thy breas 

Pouring out joy and wo, 
I have found that holy place of rest' 

Still changeless, — yet I go ! 
Lips, that have luU'd me with your strain, 

Eyes, that have watch'd my sleep: 
Will earth give love like yours again? 

Sweet mother ! let me weep ! 



THE HOMES OF ENGLAND. 

Tar. stately homes of England, 

How beautiful they stand ! 
Amidst their tall ancestral trees, 

O'er all the pleasant land. 
The deer across their greensward bound 

Through shade and sunny gleam, 
And the swan glides past them with the sound 

Of some rejoicing stream. 

The merry homes of England ! 

Around their hearths by night, 
What gladsome looks of household love 

Meet in the ruddy light ! 
There woman's voice flows forth in song, 

Or childhood's tale is told ; 
Or lips move tunefully along 

Some glorious page of old. 

The blessed homes of England ! 

How softly on their bowers 
I& laid the holy quietness 

That breathes from Sabbath-hours ! 
Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime 

Floats through their woods at morn ; 
All other sounds, in that still time, 

Of breeze and leaf are born. 



The cottage homes of England ! 

By thousands on her plains. 
They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks, 

And round the haralet-fanes. 
Through glowing orchards forth they peep, 

Each from its nook of leaves. 
And fearless there the lowly sleep. 

As the bird beneath their eaves. 

The free, fair homes of England ! 

Long, long, in hut and hall, 
May hearts of native proof be rear'd 

To guard each hallow'd wall ! 
And green for ever be the groves, 

And bright the flowery sod. 
Where first the child's glad spirit loves 

Its country and its God ! 



THE HOUR OF DEATH. 

Lkaves have their time to fall, 
And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath, 

And stars to set, — but all. 
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death ! 

Day is for mortal care, 
Eve for glad meetings round the joyous hearth. 

Night for the dreams of sleep, the voice of prayer: 
But all for thee, thou mightiest of the earth. 

The banquet hath its hour, 
Its feverish hour of mirth, and song, and wine; 

There comes a day for grief's o'erwhelmingpower, 
A time for softer tears, — but all are thine. 

Youth and the opening rose 
May look like things too glorious for decay, 

And smile at thee — but thou art not of those 
That wait the ripen'd bloom to seize their prey. 

Leaves have their time to fall, 
And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath, 

And stars to set — but all 
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death ! 

We know when moons shall wane, 
When summer-birds from far shall cross the sea, 

When autumn's hue shall tinge the golden grain: 
But who shall teach us when to look for thee? 

Is it when spring's first gale 
Comes forth to whisper where the violets lie 1 

Is it when roses in our paths grow pale? 

They have one season — all are ours to die ! 

Thou art where billows foam, 
Thou art where music melts upon the air; 

Thou art around us in our peaceful home, 
And the world calls us forth — and thou art there. 

Thou art where friend meets friend. 
Beneath the shadow of the elm to rest, — 

Thou art where fie meets foe, and trumpets rend 
The skies, and swords beats down the princely crest. 

Leaves have their time to fall. 
And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath. 

And stars to set — but all. 
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, Death ! 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



291 



MOZART'S REQUIEM. 

A REauiEM ! — and for whom 1 

For beauty in its bloom ? 
For valour fallen — a broken rose or sword 1 

A dirge for king or chief, 

With pomp of stately grief, 
Banner, and torch, and waving plume deplored 1 

Not so, it is not so ! 

That warning voice I know, 
From other worlds a strange, mysterious tone ; 

A solemn funeral air 

It call'd me to prepare. 
And my heart answer'd secretly — my own ! 

One more then, one more strain, 

In links of joy and pain 
Mighty the troubled spirit to enthral ! 

And let me breathe my dower 

Of passion and of power 
Full into that deep lay — the last of all ! 

The last ! — and I must go 

From this bright world below, 
This realm of sunshine, ringing with sweet sound ! 

Must leave its festal skies, 

With all their melodies. 
That ever in my breast glad echoes found ! 

Yet have I known it long; 

Too restless and too strong 
Within this clay iiath been the o'ermastering flame; 

Swift thoughts, that came and went. 

Like torrents o'er me sent. 
Have shaken, as a reed, my thrilling frame. 

Like perfumes on the wind. 

Which none may stay or hind. 
The beautiful comes floating through my soul; 

I strive with yearnings vain, 

The spirit to detain 
Of the deep hartponies that past me roll ! 

Therefore disturbing dreams 

Trouble the secret streams 
And founts of music that o'crflow my breast ; 

Something far more divine 

Than may on earth be mine, 
Haunts my worn heart, and will not let me rest. 

Shall I then fear the tone 

That breathes from worlds unknown! — 
Surely these feverish aspirations fhere 

Shall grasp their full desire, 

And this unsettled fire, 
Burn calmly, brightly, in immortal air. 

One more then, one more strain, 

To earthly joy and pain 
A rich, and deep, and passionate farewell ! 

I pour each fervent thought 

With fear, hope, trembling fraught, 
Into the notes that o'er my dust shall swell. 



THE DYING IMPROVISATORE. 

The spirit of my land ! 
It visits me once more ! — though I must die 
Far from the myrtles vi'hich thy breeze has fann'd, 

My own bright Italy ! 

It is, it is thy breath. 
Which stirs my soul e'en yet, as wavering flame 
Is shaken by the wind ; — in life and death 

Still trembling, yet the same. 

Oh ! that love's quenchless power 
Might waft my voice to fill thy summer sky. 
And througii thy groves its dying music shower, 

Italy ! Italy ! 

The nightingale is there, 
The sunbeam's glow, the citron-flower's perfume, 
The south-wind's whisper in the scented air, — 

It will not pierce the tomb ! 

Never, oh ! never more. 
On thy Rome's purple heaven mine eye shall dwell, 
Or watch the briglit waves melt along thy shore — 

My Italy, farewell ! 

Alas ! — thy hills among, 
Had I but left a memory of my name. 
Of love and grief one deep, true, fervent song, 

Unto immortal fame ! 

But, like a lute's brief tone, 
Like a rose-odour on the breezes cast. 
Like a swift flush of day-spring, seen and gone, 

So hath my spirit pass'd ! 

Pouring itself away. 
As a wild bird amidst the foliage turns 
That which within him triumphs, beats, or burns. 

Into a fleeting lay ; 

That swells, and floats, and dies. 
Leaving no echo to the summer woods 
Of the rich breathings and impassion'd sighs, 

Which thrill'd their sohtudes. 

Yet, yet remember me. 
Friends, that upon its murmurs oft have hung, 
When from my bosom, joyously and free, 

The fiery fountain sprung. 

Under the dark, rich blue 
Of midnight heavens, and on the star-lit sea, 
And when woods kindle into spring's first hue, 

Sweet friends, rcmeml)er mc ! 

And in the marble halls, 
Where life's full glow the dreams of beauty wear, 
And poet-thoughts embodied light the walls, 

Let me be with you there I 

Fain would I bind for you 
My memory with all glorious things to dwell ; 
Fain bid all lovely sounds my name renew, — 

Sweet friends, bright land, farewell ! 



23S 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



THE CHILDE'S DESTINY. 

"And none did love him, — not his lemans dear, — 
But pomj) and power ahme are woman's care ; 
And where these are, light Eios finds a frero." 

Byron. 

No mistress of the hidden skill, 

No wizard ^aimt and grim. 
Went up by night to heath or hill, 

To read the stars for iiim ; 
The merriest girl in all the land 

Of vine-encircled France 
Besiow'd upon his brow and hand 

Her philosophic glance: 
" I bind thee with a spell," said she, 

" I sign thee with a sign ; 
No woman's love shall light on thee, 

No woman's heart be thine ! 

" And trust me, 't is not that thy cheek 

Is colourless and cold, 
Nor that thine eye is slow to speak 

What only eyes have told ; 
For many a cheek of paler white 

Hath blush'd with passion's kiss ; 
And many an eye of lesser light 

Hath caugh^ its fire from bliss; 
Yet while the rivers seek the sea. 

And while the young stars shine. 
No woman's love shall light on thee, 

No woman's heart be thine ! 

"And 'tis not that thy spirit, awed 

By beauty's numbing spell, 
Shrinks from the force or from the fraud 

Which beauty loves so well ; 
For thou hast learn'd to watch and wake, 

And swear by earth and sky ; 
And thou art very bold to take 

What we must still deny; 
I cannot tell : the charm was wrought 

By other threa<ls than mine. 
The lips are lightly begg'd or bought, 

The heart may not be thine ! 

" Yet thine the brightest smile shall be 

That ever beauty wore. 
And confidence from two or three. 

And compliments from more ; 
And one shall give, perchance hath given. 

What only is not love, — 
Friendship, oh ! such as saints in heaven 

Rain on us from above. 
If she shall meet thee in the bower, 

Or name thee in the shrine, 
Oh ! wear the ring, and guard the flower, — 

Her heart may not be thine ! 

"Go, set thy boat before the blast, 

Thy breast before the gun, — 
The haven shall be reach'd at last, 

The battle shall be won ; 
Or muse upon thy country's laws, 

Or strike thy country's lute. 
And patriot hands shall sound applause, 

And lovely lips be mute : 



Go, dig the diamond from the wave, 
The treasure from the mine, 

Enjoy the wreath, the gold, the grave,- 
No woman's heart is thine ! 

» I charm thee from the agony 

Which others feel or feign ; 
From anger, and from jealousy, 

From doubt, and from disdain ; 
I bid thee wear the scorn of years 

Upon the cheek of youth. 
And curl the lip at passion's tears. 

And shake the head at truth: 
While there is bliss in revelry, 

Forgetfulness'in wine. 
Be thou from woman's love as free 

As woman is from thine !" 



THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIM 
FATHERS. 

Tut. breaking waves dash'd high 
On a stern and rock-bound coast, 

And the woods, against a stormy sky, 
Their giant branches toss'd ; 

And the heavy night hung dark 

The hills and waters o'er. 
When a band of exiles moor'd their bark 

On the wild New England shore. 

Not as the conqueror comes. 

They, the true-hearted, came. 
Not with, the roll of the stirring drums, 

And the trumpet that sings of fame ; 

Not as the flying come. 

In silence and in fear, — 
Thoy shook the deptlis of the desert's gloom 

With their hymns of lofty cheer. 

Amidst the storm they sang. 

And the stars heard and the sea ! 

And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang 
To the anthem of the free ! 

The ocean-eagle soar'd 

From his nest by the white wave's foam. 
And the rocking pines of the forest roar'd — 

This was their welcome home ! 

There were men with hoary hair 

Amidst that pilgrim-band — 
Vv'hy had they come to wither there 

Away from their childhood's landT 

There was woman's fearless eye, 

liit by her deep love's truth ; 
There was manhood's brow, serenely high, 

And the fiery heart of youth. 

What sought they thus afar? 

Bright jewels of the mine ? 
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? — 

They sought a faith's pure shrine ! 

Ay, call it holy ground. 

The soil where first they trod ! 
They have leftunstain'd what there they found — 

Freedom to worship God ! 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



293 



BERNARDO DEL CARPIO. 

Thk warrior bow'd his crested head, and tamed 

his heart of fire, 
And sued the haughty king to free his long-ira- 

prison'd sire ; 
" I bring thee here my fortress keys, I bring my 

captive train, 
I pledge thee faith, my liege, my lord ! — oh, break 

my father's chain !" 

" Rise, rise ! even now thy father comes, a ran- 

som'd man this day ; 
Mount thy good horse, and thou and I will meet 

him on his way." 
Then lightly rose that loyal son, and bounded on 

his steed. 
And urged, as if with lance in rest, the charger's 

foamy speed. 

And lo ! from far, as on they press'd, there came 

a glittering band, 
With one that 'midst them stately rode, as a leader 

in the land ; 
" Now haste, Bernardo, haste ! for there, in very 

truth, is he. 
The father whom thy faithful heart hath yearn'd 

so long to see." 

His dark eye flash'd, his proud breast heaved, his 

cheek's blood came and went ; 
He reach'd that gray-hair'd chieftain's side, and 

there, dismounting, bent ; 
A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father's hand 

he took, — 
What was there in its touch that all his fiery 

spirit shook? 

That hand was cold — a frozen thing — it di-opp'd 

from his like lead, — 
He look'd up to the face above — the face was of 

the dead ! 
A plume waved o'er the noble brow — the brow 

was fix'd and white; — 
He met at last his father's eyes — but in them was 

no sight ! 

L^p from the ground he sprung, and gazed, but 

who could paint that gazo] 
They hush'd their verj' hearts, that saw its horror 

and amaze ; 
They might have chain'd him, as before that stony 

form he stood. 
For the power was stricken from his arm, and 

from his lip the blood. 

" Father !" at length he murmur'd low, and wept 

like childhood then, — 
Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of 

warlike men ! 
He thought of all his glorious iiopes, and all his 

young renown. 
He flung the falchion from his side, and in the 

dust sat down. 

Then covering with his steel-gloved hands his 

darkly mournful brow, 
"No more, there is no more," he said, "to lift the 

sword for now 



My king is false, my hope betray'd, my father — 

oh ! the worth. 
The glory, and the loveliness, are pass'd away 

from earth ! 

" I thought lo stand where banners waved, my 

sire ! beside thee yet, 
I would that titerc our kindred blood on Spain's 

free soil had met, — 
Thou wouldst have known my t^pirit then, — for 

thee my fields were won, — 
And thou hast perish'd in thy chains, as though 

thou hadst no son !" 

Then, starting from the ground once more, he 
seized the monarch's rein, 

Amidst tlic pale and wilder'd looks of all the 
courtier train ; 

And with a fierce, o'erraastering grasp, the rear- 
ing war-horse led. 

And sternly set them face to face, — the king be- 
fore the dead ! — 

" Came I not forth upon thy pledge, my father's 

hand to kiss ] — 
Be still, and gaze thou on, false king ! and tell 

me what is this ! 
The voice, the glance, the heart I sought — gave 

answer, where are they '! — 
If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life 

through this cold clay ! 

" Into these glassy e3'^es put light, — be still ! keep 
down thine ire, — 

Bid these white lips a blessing speak — this earth 
is not my sire I 

Give me back him for whom 1 strove, for whom 
my blood was shed, — 

Thou canst not — and a king] — His dust be moun- 
tains on thy head !" 

He loosed the steed ; his slack hand fell, — upon 

the silent face 
He cast one long, deep, troubled look — then turn'd 

from that sad place : 
His hope was crush'd, his aftcr.-fate untold in 

martial strain, — 
His biainer led the spears no more amidst the 

hills of Spain. 



ATTRACTION OF THE EAST. 

What secret current of man's nature turns 

Unto the golden cast with ceaseless flow] 
Still, where tiic sunbeam at its fountain burns. 

The pilgrim spirit would adore and glow; 
Rapt in high thoughts, though weary . faint, and slow, 

Still doth the traveller through the deserts wind, 
Led by those old Chaldean stars, which know 

M^here pass'd the shepherd fathers of mankind. 
Is it some quenchless instinct, which from far 

Still points to where our alienated home 
Lay in bright peace ] thou true eastern star, 

Saviour ! atoning Lord ! where'er we roam. 
Draw still our hearts to thee; else, else how vain 
Their hope, the fair lost birthright to regain. 
2b2 



294 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



KINDRED HEARTS. 

On ! ask not, hope thou not too much 

Of sympathy below ; 
Few are the hearts whence one same touch 

Bids the sweet fountains flow : 
Few — and by still conflicting powers 

Forbidden here to meet — 
Such ties would make this life of ours 

Too fair for aught so fleet. 

It may be that thy brother's eye 

Sees not as thine, which turns 
In such deep reverence to the sky, 

Where the rich sunset burns: 
It may be that the breath of spring, 

Born amidst violets lone, 
A rapture o'er thy soul can bring — 

A dream, to his unknown. 

The tune that speaks of other times, — 

A sorrowful delight ! 
The melody of distant chimes. 

The sound of waves by night; 
The wind that, with so many a tone. 

Some chord within can thrill, — 
These may have language all thine own, 

To him a mystery still. 

Yet scorn thou not for this, the true 

AnA steadfast love of years; 
The kindly, that from childhood grew, 

The faithful to thy tears ! 
If there be one that o'er the dead 

Hath in thy grief borne part. 
And watch'd through sickness by thy bed, — 

Call his a kindred heart I 

But for those bonds all perfect made, 

Wherein bright spirits blend. 
Like sister flowers of one sweet shade 

With the same breeze that bend. 
For that full bliss of thought allied. 

Never to mortals given, — 
Oh ! lay thy lovely dreams aside. 

Or lift them unto heaven. 



HYMN OF THE MOUNTAIN CHRIS- 
TIAN. 

Fou the strength of the hills we bless thee. 

Our God, our fathers' God ! 
Thou hast made thy children mighty 

By the touch of the mountain sod. 
Thou hast fix'd our ark of refuge 

Where the spoiler's foot ne'er trod ; 
For the strength of Ihe hills we bless thee. 

Our God, our fathers' God ! 

We are watchers of a beacon 

Whose lights must never die; 
We are guardians of an altar 

Midst the silence of the sky ; 



The rocks yield founts of courage. 

Struck forth as by thy rod, — 
For the strength of the hills we bless thee, 

O God, our fathers' God ! 

For the dark, resounding heavens, 

Where thy still small voice is heard. 
For the strong pines of the forests. 

That by thy breath are stirr'd ; 
For the storms on whose free pinions 

Thy spirit walks abroad, — 
For the strength of the hills we bless thee. 

Our God, our fathers' God ! 

The royal eagle darteth 

On his quarry from the heights, 
And the stag that knows no master 

Seeks there his wild delights ; 
But we for Ihij communion 

Have sought the mountain sod, — 
For the strength of the hills we bless thee. 

Our God, our fathers' God ! 

The banner of the chieftain 

Far, far below us waves; 
The war-horse of the spearman 

Can not reach our lofty caves ; 
Thy dark clouds wrap the threshold 

Of freedom's last abode ; 
For the strength of the hills we bless thee. 

Our God, our fathers' God ! 

For the shadow of thy presence 

Round our camp of rock outspread; 
For the stern defiles of battle. 

Bearing record of our dead ; 
For the snows, and for the torrents. 

For the free heart's burial sod, 
For the strength of the hills we bless thee, 

Our God, our fathers' God ! 



WASHINGTON'S STATUE. 

Yes ! rear thy guardian hero's form 
On thy proud soil, thou Western World ! 
A watcher through each sign of storm. 
O'er freedom's flag unfurl'd. 

There, as before a shrine to bow, 
Bid thy true sons their children lead 
The language of that noble brow 
For all things good shall plead. 

The spirit rear'd in patriot fight, 
The virtue born of home and hearth. 
There calmly throned, a holy light 
Shall pour o'er chainless earth. 

And let that work of England's hand, 
Sent through the blast and surge's roar. 
So girt with tranquil glory, stand 
For ages on thy shore ! 

Such through all time the greetings be, 
That with the Atlantic billow sweeps ! 
Telliiiii the mighty and the free 
Of brothers o'er the deep ! 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



295 



THE LOST PLEIAD. 

And is there glory from the heavens departed 1 
— Oh! void unmark'd ! — thy sisters of the sky 
Still hold their place on high, 

Though from its rank thine orb so long hath started, 
Thou, that no more art seen of mortal eye. 

Hath the night lost a gem, the regal night T 
She wears her crown of old magnificence, 
Though thou art exiled thence — 

No desert seems to part those urns of light, 
Midst the far depth of purple gloom intense. 

They rise in joy, the starry myriads burning — 
The shepherd greets them on his mountains free; 
And from the silvery sea 

To them the sailor's wakeful eye is turning — 
Unchanged they rise, they have not mourn'd for 
thee. 

Couldst thou he shaken from thy radiant place, 
E'en as a dew-drop from the myrtle spray, 
Swept by the wind away? 

Wert thou not peopled by some glorious race, 
And was there power to smite them with decay? 

Why, who shall talk of thrones, of sceptres riven 1 
Bow'd be our hearts to think of what ice are, 
When from its height afar 

A world sinks thus — and yon majestic heaven 
Shines not the less for that one vanish'd star ! 



L 



THE FOUNTAIN OF OBLIVION. 

OxF, draught, kind fairy! from that fountain deep 
To lay the phantoms of a haunted breast, 

And lone affections, which are griefs, to steep 
In the cool honey-dews of dreamless rest; 

And from the soul the lightning-marks to lave — 
One draught of that sweet wave ! 

Yet, mortal, pause! — within thy mind is laid 
Wealth, gaiher'd long and slowly; thoughts di- 
vine 
Heap that full treasure-house; and thou hast made 

The gems of many a spirit's ocean thine; 
— Shall the dark waters to oblivion bear 
A pyramid so fair? 

Pour from the fount ! and let the draught efface 
All the vain lore by memory's pride auiass'd, 

So it but sweep along the torrent's trace. 
And fill the hollow channels of the past; 

And from the bosom's inmost folded leaf 
Rase the one master-grief! 

Yet pause once more! — ail. «// thy soul hath known. 
Loved, felt, rejoiced in, from its grasp must fade ! 

Is there no voice whose kind awakening tone 
A sense of .sy)ring-time in thy heart hath innde? 

No eye whose glance thy day-dreams would recall? 
Think — wouldst thou part with all ! 



Fill with forgetfulness ! — there are, there are 
Voices whose music I have loved too well ; 

Eyes of deep gentleness — but they are far — 
Never ! oh, never in my home to dwell ! 

Take their soft looks from off my yearning soul — 
Fill high the oblivious bowl ! 

Yet pause again ! — with memory wilt thou cast 
The undying hope away, of memory born? 

Hope of re-union, heart to heart at last. 

No restless doubt betv^'een, no rankling thorn? 

Wouldst thou erase all records of delight 

That make such visions bright? 

Fill with forgetfulness, fill high ! — yet stay — 

'T is from the past we shadow forth the land 
Where smiles, long lost, again shall light our way, 
And the soul's friends be wreath'd in one bright 
band : — 
Pour the sweet waters back on their own rill — 
I must remember still. 

For their sake, for the dead — whose image nought 
May dim within the temple of my breast — 

For their love's sake, which now no earthly thought 
May shake or trouble with its own unrest. 

Though the past haunt me like a spirit, — yet 
I ask not to forget. 



A PARTING SONG. 

When will ye think of me, my friends? 

When will ye think of me ? 
When the last red light, the farewell of day, 
From the rock and the river is passing away, 
When the air with a deepening hush is fraught. 
And the heart grows burdcn'd with tender thought — 
Then let it be ! 

When will ye think of me, kind friends? 

When will ye think of me ? — 
When the rose of the rich midsummer time 
Is fill'd with the hues of its glorious prime; 
When ye gather its bloom, as in bright hours fled. 
From the walks where my footsteps no more may 

tread ; 

Then let it be ! 

When will ye think of me, sweet friends? 

When will you think of me? — 
When the sudden tears o'erflow your eye 
At the sound of some olden melody; 
When ye hear the voice of a mountain stream, 
When ye feci the charm of a poet's dream; 
Then let it be ! 

Thus let my memory be with you friends? 

Thus ever think of me ! 
Kindly and gently, but as of one 
For whom 'tis well to he fled and gone; 
As of a bird from a chain unbound. 
As of a wanderer whose home is found ; 
So let it be. 



296 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



THOUGHTS DURING SICKNESS. 

I. IS'TELI.ECTUAt PO'WF.IIS. 

O thought! O memory! gems for ever heaping 
High in the illumined chambers of the mind, 

And thou, divine imagination ! keeping [shrined ; 
Thy lamp's lone star mid shadowy hosts en- 
How in one moment rent and disentwined, 

At fever's fiery touch apart they fall, 

Your glorious combinations ! — broken all. 
As the sand-pillars by the desert's wind 

Scatter'd to whirling dust ! — oh, soon uncrown'd I 
Well may yourpartingswift, your strange return, 

Subdue the soul to lowliness profound, 
Guiding its chasten'd vision to discern 

How by meek faith heaven's portals must be pass'd 

Ere it can hold your gifts inalienably fast. 

II. SICKNESS LIKE NIGHT. 

Thou art like night, O sickness ! deeply stilling 

Within my heart the world's disturbing sound. 
And the dim quiet of my chamber filling 

With low, sweet voices by life's tumult drown'd. 

Thou art like awful night ! — thou gather'st round 
The things that are unseen, though close they lie — 

And with a truth, clear, startling, and profound, 
Givest their dread presence to our mental eye. 
— Thou art like starry, spiritual night ! 

High and immortal thoughts attend thy way. 
And revelations, which the common light 

Brings not, though wakening with its rosy ray 
All outward life; — Be welcome then thy rod, 
Before whose touch my soul unfolds itself to God. 

III. — hetzsch's design, the angez of death. 
Well might thine awful image thus arise 

With that high calm upon thy regal brow, 
And the deep, solemn sweetness in those eyes, 
Unto the glorious artist ! — Who but thou 
The fleeting forms of beauty «an endow 
For him with permanency? who make those gleams 
Of brighter life, that colour his lone dreams. 

Immortal things 1 — Let others fremhling bow, 
Angel of death ! before thee. — Not to those, 
Whose spirits with Eternal Truth repose, 
Art thou a fearful shape ! — and oh ! for me 

How full of welcome would thine aspect shine. 
Did not the cords of strong affection twine 
So fast around my soul, it cannot spring to thee ! 

IT. — rememrrance of nature. 
O Nature ! thou didst rear. me for thine own 

With thy free singing-birds and mountain brooks ; 

Feeding my thoughts in primrose haunted nooks, 
With fairy fantasies, and wood-dreams lone ; 
And thou didst teach me every wandering tone 

Drawn from thy many-whisperingtreesand waves, 

And guide my steps to founts and sparry caves, 
And where bright mosses wove thee a rich throne 

Midst the green hills: and now, that, far estranged 
From all sweet sounds and odours of thy breath, 

Fading I lie, within my heart unchanged. 
So gl:jws the love of thee, that not hr death, 
Seems that pure passion's fervour — hvX ordain'd 
To meet on brighter shores thy majesty unstain'd. 



T. FLIGHT OF THE SPIRIT. 

Whither, oh I whither wilt thou wing thy way 1 
What solemn region first upon thy sight 
Shall break, unveil'd for terror or delight T 
What hosts, magnificent in dread array ] 
My spirit, when thy prison-house of clay. 

After long strife is renti — fond, fruitless guest! 
The unfledged bird, within his narrow nest 
Sees but a few green branches o'er him play, 
And through their parting leaves, by fits reveal'd, 
A glimpse of summer sky: — nor knows the field 

Wherein his dormant powers must yet be tried. 
Thou art that bird ! — of what beyond thee lies 
Far in the uiitrack'd, immeasurable skies, [Guide ! 
Knowing but this — that thou shalt find thy 

VI. FLOWERS. 

Welcome, O pure and lovely forms, again 
Unto the shadowy stillness of my room ; 

For not alone 3^e bring a joyous train 

Of summer-thoughts attendant on your bloom, 

Visions of freshness, of rich bowery gloom, 
Of the low murmurs filling mossy dells. 
Of stars that look dovk-n on your folded bells 

Through dewy leaves, of many a wild perfume, 
Greeting the wanderer of the hill and grove 

Like sudden music ; more than this ye bring — 
Far more ; .ye whisper of the all-fostering love 

Which thus hath clothed you, and whose dove-liko 

Broods o'erthesuiTererdrawingfever'd breath, [wing 

Whether the couch be that of life or death. 

VII. RECOVERT. 

Back, then, once more to breast the waves of life, 

To battle on against the unceasing spray, 
To sink o'erwearied in the stormy strife. 
And rise to strife again ; yet on my way 
O, linger still, thou light of better day ! 
Born in the hours of loneliness, and you. 
Ye childlike thoughts, the holy and the true; 
Ye that came bearing, while subdued I lay, 
The faith, the insight of life's vernal morn 
Back on my soul, a clear, bright sense, new-born, 
Now leave me not! but as, profoundly pure, 
A blue stream rushes through a darker lake 
Unchanged, e'en thus with me your journey take, 
Wafting sweet airs of heaven through this low 
world obscure. 



TO A FAMILY BIBLE. 

WHAThousehoIdthoughtsaroundtheeastheirshrine 

Cling reverently ! — of anxious looks beguiled, 
Mv mother's eyes upon thy page divine • 

Each day were bent; her accents gravely mild. 
Breathed out thy lore: whilst I, a dreamy child, 
"Wander'd on breeze-like fancies oft away, 

To some lone tuft of gleaming spring-flowers wild. 
Some fresh-discover'd nook for woodland play, 
Son>e secret nest : — yet would the solemn Word 
At times, with kindlings of young wonder beard, 

Fall on my waken'd spirit, there to be 
A seed not lost; for which, in darker years, 
O Boole of Heaven ! I pour, with grate.^ul tears, 
Heart blessings on the holy dead and thee ! 



SERJEANT TALFOURD. 



Thomas Noon Talfourd is a native of 
Reading, and was born about the year 1796. 
He was educated at a grammar school under 
Dr. Valpv, and in 1811, while yet a student 
in the classics, he published his first volume 
of poems. One of these early compositions is 
"On the Brotherhood of Mankind," and another 
on "The Education of the Poor." They won 
for him the acquaintance and friendship of 
Lord Brougham, who advised him to work 
his way through literature to the bar. He 
studied his profession under Mr. Chitty, 
whom he assisted in his great work on the 
Criminal Laws. 

His earlier essays as an author were seve- 
ral pamphlets on religion and politics, and, in 
1815, "An Attempt to Estimate the Poetical 
Talent of the Present Age." 

He was cnlled to the bar by the society of 
the Middle Temple in 1821, and in 1834 he 
was elected to Parliament, from his native 
town, by a large majority of all parties. He 
was returned again in 1839, but declined being 
a candidate in 1841. 

Previous to the publication of his great dra- 
matic poem, he was only known on this side 
of the Atlantic as the author of various criti- 
cal articles in the "New Monthly Magazine," 
the "Edinburgh Review," the "Encyclope- 
dia Metropolitana," and the " Retrospective 
Review," written with much grace of style, 
and abounding in metaphor and illustration. 
He was the fiiend of Lamb, Hazlitt, Hunt, 
and the other members of the literary coterie 
of which they formed a part, and has repeat- 
edly borne testimony to tlieir genius and cha- 
racter, even at those periods when to praise 
some of them was to participate in their un- 
popularity. Of all the autiiors of the present 
age, however, he seems to have the most 
veneration for WoRns worth. He has poured 
forth the full wealth of his own mind in illus- 
trating the poetry and poetical character of his 
idol. The publication of "Ion" gave him an 
immediate reputation both in Great Britain 
and in this country, — a reputation which pro- 
mises to be lasting. Tlie two tragedies he 
has since produced, "Tiie Athenian Captive," 

and "Glencoe," though of much merit, have 
36 



been overshadowed by the fame of his first 
effort. 

Talfourd has earned the gratitude of men 
of letters by his celebrated defence of Moxon, 
who was prosecuted as the publisher of Shel- 
ley, and for his advocacy of the rights of au- 
thors, in various speeches in the House of 
Commons on the copyright question. His 
writings, whether in prose or verse, bear the 
marks of patient meditation and careful cor- 
rection. They display a fine temper, large 
attainments, an affluent imagination, and great 
richness and fulness of diction. Few works 
of the age are characterized by such purity 
of thought, or display a deeper love and reve- 
rence for beauty and goodness. The mildness 
of his disposition, his tenderness of feeling 
and sentiment, the calm, brooding spirit dif- 
fused over his compositions, and his tendency 
to overload his diction with glittering words 
arid images, have subjected him, at times, to 
the charge of effeminacy and euphaism ; but 
there is no lack of true power discernible in 
him, if we pass behind the profuse ornaments 
of his style, to the thought and emotion they 
are intended to decorate. 

No recent age has produced in England 
more fine dramatic poetry than the present. 
Of the acted dramatists, Talfourd, Bulwer, 
an<[ Knowles have been most successful. It 
is wonderful, considering the condition of the 
stage, that the faultless, classical poetry of 
"Ion" was received with such applause. 
Browning, author -of " Paracelsus" and 
"Strafford," Marston, author of the "Patri- 
cian's Daughter," and others, have written 
pieces full of passionate and imaginative 
poetry, but failed- of audience, except in 
the closet, and after a few efforts, unsuc- 
cessful with the managers, have abandoned 
the dramatic for the epic or lyric forms of 
composition. 

A collection of Talfourd's "Critical and 
Miscellaneous Writings," comprising all his 
more important contributions to the literary 
magazines, was published by Carey and Hart 
in 1843, and about the same time Moxon 
brought out in London a complete edition of 
his tragedies and minor poems. 



298 



SERGEANT TALFOURD. 



VERSES 

TO THE MEMORY OF A CHILD NAMED AFTER 
CHARLES LAMB. 

OcR gentle Charles has pass'd away, 
From earth's short bondage tree, 

And left to us its leaden day 
And mist-enshrouded sea. 

Here, by the restless ocean's side, 
Sweet hours of hope have flown, 

When first the triun]i)h of its tide 
Seem'd omen of our own. 

That eager joy the sea-breeze gave, 

When first it raised his hair. 
Sunk with each day's retiring wave, 

Beyond the reach of prayer. 

The sun-blink that through dazzling mist, 

To flickering hope akin, 
Far waves with feeble fondness kiss'd, 

No smile as faint can win ; 

Yet not in vain with radiance weak 
The heavenly stranger gleams — 

Not of the world it lights to speak. 
But that from whence it streams. 

That world our patient sufferer sought. 

Serene with pitying eyes, 
As if his mounting spirit caught 

The wisdom of the skies. 

With boundless love it look'd abroad 
For one bright moment given. 

Shone with a loveliness that awed, 
And quiver'd into heaven. 

A year made slow by care and toil 

Has paced its vi'eary round, 
Since death's enrich'd v^ith kindred spoil 

The snow-clad, frost-ribb'd ground. 

Then Lamb, with whose endearing name 

Our boy we proudly graced, 
Shrank from the warmth of sweeter fame 

Than ever bard embraced. 

Still 't was a mournful joy to think 

Our darling might supply 
For years on earth, a living link 

To name that cannot die. 

And though such fancy gleam no more 

On earthly sorrow's night. 
Truth's nobler torch unveils the shore 

Where lends to both its light. 

The nurseling there that hand may take 

None ever grasp'd in vain. 
And smiles of well-known sweetness wake. 

Without their tinge of pain. 

Though 'twixt the child and childlike bard 

Late seem'd distinction wide. 
They now may trace, in Heaven's regard. 

How near they were allied. 



Within the infant's ample brow 

Biythe fancies lay unfurl'd. 
Which, all uncrush'd, may open now 

To charm a sinless world. 

Though the soft spirit of those eyes 
Might ne'er with Lamb's compete — 

Ne'er sparkle with a wit as wise. 
Or melt in tears as sweet. 

That calm and unforgotten look 

A kindred love reveals 
With his who never friend forsook 

Or hurt a thing that feels. 

In thought profound, in wildest glee, 
In sorrow's lengthening range, 

His guileless soul of infancy 
Endured no spot or change. 

From traits of each our love receives 

For comfort nobler scope; 
While light which childlike genius leaves 

Confirms the infant's hope : 

And in that hope with sweetness fraught 

Be aching hearts beguiled, 
To blend in one delightful thought 

The poet and the child. 



LINES 

WRITTEN AT THE NEEDLES HOTEL, ALUM BAY, ISLE 
OF WIGHT, AFTER A WEEK SPENT AT THAT PLACE. 

How simple in their grandeur are the forms 
That constitute this picture ! Nature grants 
Scarce more than sternest cynic might desire — 
Earth, sea, and sky, and hardly lends to each 
Variety of colour ; yet the soul 
Asks nothing fairer than the scene it grasps 
And makes its own for ever! From the gate 
Of this home-featured inn, which nestling cleaves 
To its own shelf among the downs, begirt 
With trees which lift no branches to defy 
The fury of the storm, but crouch in love [ccive 
Round the low snow-white walls whence they re- 
More shelter than they lend — the heart-soothed guest 
Views a furze-dotted common, on each side 
Wreath'd into waving eminences, clothed 
Above the furze with scanty green, in front 
Indented sharply to admit the sea, 
Spread thence in softest blue — to which a gorge, 
Sinking within the valley's deepening green. 
Invites by grassy path ; the eastern down. 
Swelling with pride into the waters, shows 
Its sward-tipp'd precipice of radiant white. 
And claims the dazzling peak beneath its brow 
Part of its ancient bulk, which hints the strength 
Of those famed pinnacles that still withstand 
The conquering waves, as fortresses maintain'd 
By death-devoted troops, hold out awhile 
After the game of war is lost, to prove 
The virtue of the conquer'd. — Here are scarce 
Four colours for the painter ; yet the charm 
Which permanence, mid worldly change, confers 



SERGEANT TALFOURD. 



299 



Is felt, if ever, here ; for he who loves 

To bid this scene refresh his inward eye 

When far away, may feel it keeping still 

The very aspect that it wore for him, 

Sure changed by time or season : autumn finds 

Scant boughs on which the lustre of decay 

May tremble fondly ; storms may rage in vain 

Above the clumps of sturdy furze, which stand 

The forest of the fairies ; twilight gray 

Finds in the landscape's stern and simple forms 

Naught to conceal ; the moon, although she cast 

Upon the element, she sways a track 

Like that which slanted through young Jacob's sleep 

From heaven to earth, and flutter'd at the soul 

Of shadow's mighty painter, who thence drew 

Hints of a glory beyond shape, reveals 

The clear-cut framework of the sea and downs 

Shelving to gloom, as unperplex'd with threads 

Of pallid light, as when the summer's noon 

Bathes them in sunshine ; and the giant cliffs 

Scarce veiling more their lines of flint, that run 

Likeveins of moveless blue, through theirbleak sides, 

In moonlight than in day, shall tower as now 

(Save when some moss's slender stain shall break 

Into the samphire's yellow in mid air. 

To tempt some trembling life) until the eyes 

Which gaze in childhood on them shall be dim. 

Yet deem not that these sober forms are all 
That Nature here provides, although she frames 
These in one lasting picture for the heart. 
Within the foldings of the coast she breathes 
Hues of fantastic beauty. Thread the gorge 
And, turning on the beach, while the low sea 
Spread out in mirror'd gentleness, allows 
A path along the curving edge, behold 
Such dazzling glory of prismatic tints 
Flung o'er the lofty crescent, as assures 
The orient gardens where Aladdin pluck'd 
Jewels for fruit no fable — as if earth. 
Provoked to emulate the rainbow's gauds 
In lasting mould, had snatch'd its floating hues 
And fix'd them here; for never o'er the bay 
Flew a celestial arch of brighter grace 
Than the gay coast exhibits ; here the cliff 
Flaunts in a brighter yellow than the stream 
Of Tiber wafted ; then with softer shades 
Declines to pearly white, which blushes soon 
With pink as delicate as autumn's rose 
Wears on its scattering leaves ; anon the shore 
Recedes into a fane-like dell, where stain'd 
With black, as if with sable tapestry hung, 
Light pinacles rise taper : further yet 
Swells out in solemn mass a dusky veil 
Of purpled crimson, — while bright streaks of red 
Start out in gleam-like tint, to tell of veins 
Which the slow-winning sea, in distant times, 
Shall bare to unborn gazers. 

If this scene 
Grow too fantastic for thy pensive thought, 
Climb either swelling down, and gaze with joy 
On the blue ocean, pour'd around the heights, 
As it embraced the wonders of that shield 
Which the vow'd friend of slain Patroclus wore, 
To grace his fated valour ; nor disdain 
The quiet of the vale, though not endow'd 



With such luxurious beauty as the coast 
Of Undcrcliff embosoms ; — mid those lines 
Of scanty foliage, thoughtful lanes and paths, 
And cottage roofs find shelter; the blue stream. 
That with its brief vein almost threads the isle. 
Flows blest with two gray towers, beneath whose 
The village life sleeps trustfully, whose rites [shade 
Touch the old weather-harden'd fisher's heart 
With child-like softness, and shall teach the boy 
Who kneels, a sturdy grandson, at his side. 
When his frail boat amidst the breakers parts 
To cast the anchor of a Christian hope 
In an unrippled haven. Then rejoice, 
That in remotest point of this sweet isle. 
Which with fond mimicry combines each shape 
Of the great land that, by the ancient bond 
(Sea-parted once, and sea-united now) 
Binds her in unity — a spirit breaths 
On cliff, and tower, and valley, by the side 
Of cottage-fire, and the low grass-grown grave, 
Of home on English earth, and home in heaveji! 



KINDNESS. 

Thk blessings which the weak and poor can scatter 
Have their own season. 'Tis a little thing 
To give a cup of water ; yet its draught 
Of cool refreshment, drain'd by fever'd lips, 
May give a shock of pleasure to the frame 
More exquisite than when nectarean juice 
Renews the life of joy in happiest hours. 
It is a little thing to speak a phrase 
Of common comfort which by daily use 
Has almost lost its sense ; yet on the ear 
Of him who thought to die unmourn'd 'twill fall 
Like choicest music ; fill the glazing eye 
With gentle tears; relax the knotted hand 
To know the bonds of fellowship again ; 
And shed on the departing soul a sense 
More precious than the benison of friends 
About the honour'd death-bed of the rich, 
To him who else were lonely, that another 
Of the great family is near and feels. 



TO THE MEMORY OF THE POETS. 

The fame of those pure bards whose faces lie 
Like glorious clouds in summer's calmest even, 
Fringing the western skirts of darkening heaven, 
And sprinkled o'er with hues of rainbow dye, 
Awakes no voice of thunder, which may vie 

With mighty chiefs' renown ; — from ages gone, 
In low, undying strain, it lengthens on. 
Earth's greenest solitudes with joy to fill, — 
Felt breathing in the silence of the sky. 
Or trembling in the gush of new-born rill, 

Or whispering o'er the hike's undimpled breast; 
Yet blest to live when trumpet-notes are still, 
To wake a pulse of earth-born ecstasy 
In the deep bosom of eternal rest. 



'r= 



300 



SERGEANT TALFOURD. 



ION DESCRIBED BY AGENOR. 

lox, our sometime darling, whom we prized 

As a stray gift, by bounteous Heaven dismiss'd 

From some bright sphere which sorrow may not cloud 

To make the happy happier ! Is he sent 

To grapple with the miseries of this time, 

Whose nature such ethereal aspect wears 

As it would perish at the touch of wrong? 

By no internal contest is he train'd 

For such hard duty ; no emotions rude 

Halh his clear spirit vanquish'd ; Love, the germ 

Of his mild nature, hath spread graces forth, 

Expanding with its progress, as the store 

Of rainbow colour which the seed conceals 

Siieds out its tints from his dim treasury. 

To flush and circle in the flower. No tear 

Hath fill'd his eye save that of thoughtful joy, 

When, in the evening stillness, lovely things 

Press'd on his soul too bunily ; his voice, 

If, in the earnestness of childish sports. 

Raised to the tone of anger, check'd its force, 

As if it fear'd to break its being's law. 

And falter'd into music ; when the forms 

Of guilty passion have been made to live 

In pictured speech, and others have wax'd loud 

In righteous indignation, he hath heard 

With sceptic smile, or from some slender vein 

Of goodness, which surrounding gloom conceal d, 

Struck sunlight o'er it ; so his life hath flow'd 

From its mysterious urn a sacred stream. 

In whose calm depth the beautiful and pure 

Alone are mirror'd ; which, though shapes of ill 

May hover round its surface, glides in light, 

And takes no shadow from them. 



ION RECEIVING THE SACRIFICIAL 
KNIFE FROM CTESIFHON. 

Ye eldest gods, 
Who in no statues of exactest form 
Are palpable; who shun the azure heights 
Of beautiful Olympus, and the sound 
Of ever-young Apollo's minstrelsy ; 
Yet, mindful of the empire which ye held 
Over dim Chaos, keep revengeful wrath 
On falling nations, and on kingly lines 
About to sink for ever : ye, who shed 
Into the passions of earth's giant brood 
And their fierce usages the sense of justice; 
Who clothe the fated battlements of tyranny 
With blackness as a funeral pall, and breathe 
Through the proud halls of time-embolden'd guilt 
Portents of ruin, hear me ! — In your presence. 
For now I feel ye nigh, I dedicate 
This arm to the destruction of the king 
And of his race ; O keep me pitiless : 
Expel all human weakness from my frame, 
That this keen weapon shake not when his heart 
Should feel its point ; and if he has a child 
Whose blood is needful to the sacrifice 
My country asks, harden my soul to shed it ! — 
Was not that thunder ] 



ION AT THE ENTRANCE OF A 
FOREST. 

O wiNDixo pathwa3rs, o'er whose scanty blades 
Of unaspiring grass mine eyes have bent 
So often when by musing fancy sway'd, 
That craved alliance with no wider scene 
Than your fair thickets border'd, but was pleased 
To deem the toilsome years of manhood flown, 
And, on the pictured mellowness of age 
Idly reflective, image my return 
From careful wanderings, to find ye gleam 
With unchanged aspect on a heart unchanged, 
And melt the busy past to a sweet dream 
As then the future was; — why should ye now 
Echo my steps with melancholy sound 
As ye were conscious of a guilty presence? 
The lovely light of eve, that, as it waned, 
Tonch'd ye with softer, homelier look, now fades 
In dismal blackness ; — and yon twisted roots 
Of ancient trees, with whose fantastic forms 
My thoughts grew humorous, look terrible, 
As if about to start to serpent life. 
And hiss around me; — whither shall I turn? — 
Where fly ? — I see the myrtle-cradled spot 
Where human love, instructed by divine, 
Found and embraced me first ; I'll cast me down 
LTpon that earth as on a mother's breast, 
In hope to feel myself again a child. 



FAME. 



The names that slow oblivion have defied, 
And passionate ambition's wildest shocks 
Stand in lone grandeur, like eternal rocks. 

To cast broad shadows o'er the silent tide 

Of time's unebbing flood, whose waters glide 
To ponderous darkness from their secret spring. 
And, bearing on each transitory thing. 

Leave those old monuments in loneliest pride. 
There stand they — fortresses uprear'd by man. 

Whose earthly frame is mortal ; symbols high 

Of power unchanging, — thought that cannot die ; 
Proofs that our nature is not of a span, 

But of immortal essence, and allied 

To life and joy and love unperishing. 



TO THE THAMES AT WESTMINSTER. 

With no cold admiration do I gaze 
Upon thy pomp of waters, matchless stream ! 
But home-sick fancy kindles with the beam 

That on thy lucid bosom faintly plays, 

And glides delighted through thy crystal ways, 
Till on her eye those wave-fed poplars gleam. 

Beneath whose shade her first ethereal maze 
She fashion'd ; where she traced in clearest dream 

Thy mirror'd course of wood-enshrined repose 
Besprent with island haunts of spirits bright ; 

And wid(Miing on — till, at the vision's close. 
Great London, only then a name of might 

For childish thought to build on, proudly rose 
A rock-throned city clad in heavenly light. 



JOHN KEATS. 



John Keats was born on the twenty-ninth 
of October, 1796, in the Moorfields, London, 
where his father and grandfather kept a livery- 
stable. His birth is said to have been pre- 
mature; he was a feeble and sickly child; 
and whatever had been the cast of his life, it 
would probably have been of brief duration. 
He received the rudiments of a classical educa- 
tion at Enfield, and on leaving school was 
apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton; but 
coming into possession of a small patrimony, 
he abandoned the study of a profession, and 
determined to devote his time to poetry. Mr. 
Charles Cowden Clarke, editor of "The 
Riches of Chaucer," introduced him to Leigh 
Hunt, then proprietor of the "Examiner," in 
which appeared the first poems he ever publish- 
ed. " I shall never forget," writes Mr. Hunt, 
"the impression made upon me by the exube- 
rant specimens of genuine, though young, poe- 
try, which were laid before me, the promise 
of which was seconded by the fine, fervid coun- 
tenance of the writer." They soon became 
very intimate. " We read and walked to- 
gether," says Hunt, " and used to write verses 
of an evening upon a given subject; no ima- 
ginative pleasure was left unnoticed by us, or 
unenjoyed ; from the recollection of the bards 
and patriots of old, to the luxury of a summer 
rain at our window, or the clicking of the coal 
in winter-time." At this lime Keats was 
twenty-one; in the next year, 1817, appeared 
his first volume of poetry, and in the follow- 
ing spring, "Endymion." They were badly 
received by the critics. Every one, we sup- 
pose, has heard of the bitter review attributed 
to GiFFORD, in the Quarterly, which, with 
some siiow of reason, was said to have caused 
the poet's death. It was in the common vein 
of those critics who, misapprehending the na- 
ture of their vocation, read only to discover 
faults. The poems, with great and singular 
beauties, had, indeed, their blemishes, such as 
are common to young authors. They were 
diffuse, and abounded in strange words, and 
unallowable rhymes ; but they contained no- 
ble passages, such as were never written by 



any other author of so immature an age. It is 
best, generally, to point out with honest 
frankness a young writer's faults; too much 
censure is better than over-praise ; but Keats 
was morbidly sensitive, quite unfit to bear the 
unsparing ridicule and invective with which 
his works were greeted, embittering the resi- 
due of his brief life, if they did not cause his 
death. 

After the publication of " P'ndymion," 
Keats made excursions into Scotland, and to 
the south of England and the Isle of Wight. 
During a severe illness which followed, he 
was watched over with tender solicitude by 
his friends Mr, Charles Brown and Leigh 
Hunt. Though depressed, he was not dis- 
heartened, and he wrote in two years his 
" Lamia," " Isabella," " Eve of St. Agnes," 
"Hyperion," and some minor poems, which 
were printed in 1820, " He sent them out," 
says Shelley, with " a careless despair," 
without confidence or fear. But the world 
was now prepared to render a different verdict 
upon his works. " Hyperion," wrote Byron, 
"seems inspired by the Titans, and is as sub- 
lime as iEschylus." Praise was not yet 
universal, but it came from the high-priests of 
genius. 

In October of this year, Keats left England, 
never to return. He sailed for Naples, whence 
he soon went to Rome. He lingered there, in 
gradual decline, until the year was nearly 
closed, gentle, and patient, and grateful for 
every kindness. He knew that he was dying. 
" 1 feel the daisies growing over me," he said 
one day, and at another time he requested that 
if any epitaph were put above him, it should 
be, " Here lies one whose name was writ in wa- 
ter.''^ He died on the twenty-seventh of 
December, 1820, and was buried close by the 
pyramid of Cestus, in the cemetery of the 
English Protestants, at Rome ; " a place so 
beautiful," says Shelley, " thai it might al- 
most make one in love with death," 

" He was under the middle height;" says 
Leigh Hunt, "and his lower limbs viere 
small in comparison with the upper, but neat 
2C 301 



302 



JOHN KEATS. 



and well-turned. His shoulders were very broad 
for his size ; he had a face in which energy and 
sensibility were remarkably mixed up — an 
eager power, checked and made patient by ill- 
health. Every feature was at once strongly cut 
and delicately alive. If there was any faulty 
expression, it was in the mouth, which was not 
without something of a character of pugnacity. 
The face was rather long than otherwise ; the 
upper lip projected a little over the under; the 
chin was bold, the cheeks sunken ; the eyes 
mellow and glowing — large, dark, and sensi- 
tive. At the recital of a noble action, or a 
beautiful thought, they would suffuse with 
tears, and his mouth trembled. In this, there 
was ill-health as well as imagination, for he 
did not like these betrayals of emotion : and 
he had great personal, as well as moral cou- 



rage. His hair, of a brown colour, was fine, 
and hung in natural ringlets." 

Keats was the greatest of all poets who 
have died so young. His imagination, which 
he most delighted to indulge through the me- 
dium of mythological fable, was affluent and 
warm. Some of his pictures of this kind are 
rich beyond any similar productions in our 
language. They have a voluptuous glow, 
that prove a keen and passionate sense of the 
beautiful. The loose versification of many of 
his works has induced belief that he lacked 
energy proportionate to the vividness of his 
conceptions; but the opinion is wrong. 
Many of his sonnets possess a Miltonic 
vigour, and his " Eve of St. Agnes," is as 
highly finished, almost, as the masterpieces 
of Pope. 



THE EVE OF ST. AGNES. 

St. Agnes' Eve — Ah, bitter chill it was ! 
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold ; 
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, 
And silent was the flock in woolly fold : 
Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told 
His rosary, and while his frosted breath, 
Like pious incense from a censer old, 
Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death. 
Past the sweet virgin's picture, while his prayer he 
saith. 

His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man ; 
Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees, 
And back returneth, meager, barefoot, wan, 
Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees : 
The sculptured dead, on each side, seem to freeze, 
Imprison'd in black, purgatorial rails : 
Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries, 
He passeth by ; and his weak spirit fails 
To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails. 

Northward he turneth through a little door, 
And scarce three steps, ere music's golden tongue 
Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor ; 
But no — already had his death-bell rung ; 
The joys of all his life were said and sung ; 
His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve : 
Another way he went, and soon among 
Rough ashes sat he for his soul's reprieve, 
And all night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve. 

That ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft ; 
And so it chanced, for many a door was wide, 
From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft. 
The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide : 
The level chambers, ready with their pride. 
Were glowing to receive a thousand guests : 
The carved angels, ever eager-eyed. 
Stared, where upon their heads the cornice rests, 
With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise 
on their breasts. 



At length burst in the argent revelry, 
M^ith plume, tiara, and all rich array. 
Numerous as shadows haunting fairily 
The brain, new stuff 'd, in youth, with triumphs gay 
Of old romance. These lot us wish away, 
And turn, sole-thoughtcd, to one lady there. 
Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day, 
On love, and wing'd St. Agnes' saintly care, 
As she had heard old dames full many times declare. 

They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve, 
Young virgins might have visions of delight, 
And soft adorings from their loves receive 
Upon the honey 'd middle of the night, 
If ceremonies due they did aright; 
As, suppeiless to bed they must retire. 
And couch supine their beauties, lily white ; 
Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require 
Of heaven with u]iward e^'es for all that they desire. 

Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline: 
The music, yearning like a god in pain. 
She scarcely heard : her maiden eyes divine, 
Fix'd on the floor, saw many a sweeping train 
Pass by — she heeded not at all : in vain 
Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier. 
And back retired ; not cool'd by high disdain. 
But she saw not : her heart vi'as otherwhere : 
She sigh'd for Agnes' dreams, the sweetest of the 
year. 

She danced along with vague, regardless eyes, 
Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short: 
The hallow'd hour was near at hand : she sighs 
Amid the timbrels, and the throng'd resort 
Of whispers in anger, or in sport ; 
Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn, 
Hoodwink'd with fairy fancy ; all amort. 
Save to St. Agnes, and her lambs unshorn. 
And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn. 

So, purposing each moment to retire. 

She linger'd still. Meantime, across the moors, 



JOHN KEATS. 



303 



Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire 
For Madeline. Beside the portal doors, 
Buttress'd from moonlight, stands he, and implores 
All saints to give him sight of Madeline, 
But for one moment in the tedious hours, 
That he might gaze and worship all unseen ; 
Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss — in sooth, such 
things have been. 

He ventures in : let no buzz'd whisper tell : 
All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords 
Will storm his heart, love's fev'rous citadel. 
For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes, 
Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords, 
Whose very dogs would execrations howl 
Against his lineage : not one breast afl'ords 
Him any mercy, in that mansion foul, 
Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul. 

Ah, happy chance ! the aged creature came, 
Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand, 
To where he stood, hid from the torch's flame, 
Behind a broad hall-pillar, far beyond 
The sound of merriment and chorus bland : 
He startled her : but soon she knew his face, 
And grasp'd his fingers in her palsied hand. 
Saying. " Mercy, Porphyro ! hie thee from this 

place ; 
They are all here to-night, the whole bloodthirsty 

race ! 

" Get hence ! get hence ! there 's dwarfish Hilde- 

brand ; 
He had a fever late, and in the fit 
He cursed thee and thine, both house and land : 
Then there 's that old Lord Maurice, not a whit 
More tame for his gray hairs — Alas me ! flit ! 
Flit like a ghost away." — " Ah ! gossip dear, 
Wc 're safe enough ; here in this arm-chair sit, 
And tell me how" — " Good saints ! not here, not 

here ; 
Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy 

bier." 

He followed through a lowly arched way, 
Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume, 
And as she mutter'd " Well-a — well-a-day !" 
He found him in a little moonlight room, 
Pale, latticed, chill, and silent as a tomb. 
" Now tell me where is Madeline," said he, 
"Oh tell me, Angela, by the holy loom 
Which none but secret sisterhood may see, 
When they St. Agnes' wool are weaving piously." 

"St. Agnes! Ah ! it is St. Agnes' Eve — 
Yet men will murder upon holy days : 
Thou must hold water in a witch's sieve. 
And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays, 
To venture so : it fills me with amaze 
To see thee, Por[)hyro ! — St. Agnes' Eve ! 
God's help ! my lady fair the conjuror plays 
This very night : good angels her deceive ! 
But let me laugh awhile, I'vemickle time to grieve." 

Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon, 
While Porphyro upon her face doth look. 
Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone 
Who keepeth closed a wondrous riddle-book, 



As spectacled she sits in chimney-nook. 
But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she told 
His lady's purpose ; and he scarce could brook 
'I'ears, at the thought of those enchantments cold, 
And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old. 

Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose, 
Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart 
Made purple riot : then doth he propose 
A stratagem, that makes the beldame start: 
" A cruel man and impious thou art: 
Sweet lady, let her play, and sleep, and dream 
Alone with her good angels, far apart 
"From wicked men like thee. Go, go ! — I deem 
Thou canst not surely be the same that thou didst 
seem." 

" I will not harm her, by all saints I swear," 
Quoth Porphyro: "O may I ne'er find grace 
When my weak voice shall whisper its last prayer. 
If one of her soft ringlets I displace. 
Or look with ruffian passion in her face : 
Good Angela, believe me by these tears ; 
Or I will, even in a moment's space, 
Awake, with horrid shout, my foemen's ears. 
And beard them, though they be more fang'd than 
wolves and bears." 

" Ah ! why wilt thou aflfright a feeble soul ? 
A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing. 
Whose passing-bell may, ere the midnight, toll ; 
Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening. 
Were never miss'd." — Thus plaining, doth she 

bring 
A gentler speech from burning Porphyro ; 
So woful, and of such deep sorrowing. 
That Angela gives promise siie will do 
Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or wo. 

Which was to lead him, in close secrecy, 
Even to Madeline's chamber, and there hide 
Him in a closet, of such privacy 
That he might see her beauty unespied. 
And win perhaps that night a peerless bride, 
While legion'd fairies paced the coverlet. 
And pale enchantment held her sleepy-eyed. 
Never on such a night have lovers met. 
Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt. 

" It shall be as thou wishest," said the dame : 
" All cates and dainties shall be stored there 
Quickly on this feast-night : by the tambour frame 
Her own lute thou wilt see : no time to spare, 
For I am slow and feeble, and scarce dare 
On such a catering trust my dizzy head. 
Wait here my child, with patience ; kneel in prayer 
The while : Ah ! thou must needs the lady wed, 
Or may I never leave my grave among the dead." 

So saying she hobbled ofTwith busy fear. 
The lover's endless minutes slowly pass'd ; 
The dame return'd, and whispcr'd in his ear 
To follow her ; with aged eyes aghast 
From fright of dim espial. Safe at last, 
Through many a dusky gallery, they gain 
The maiden's chamber, silken, hush'd,and chaste; 
Where Porphyro took covert, pleased amain. 
His poor guide hurried back with agues in her brain. 



304 



JOHN KEATS. 



Her faltering hand upon the balustrade, 
Old Angela was feeling for the stair, 
When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid 
Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware ; 
With silver taper's light, and pious care, 
She turn'd, and down the aged gossip led 
To a safe level matting. Now prepare, 
Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed ; 
She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd 
and fled. 

Out went the taper as she hurried in ; 
Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died : 
She closed the door, she panted, all akin 
To spirits of the air, and visions wide : 
No utter'd syllable, or, wo betide ! 
But to her heart, her heart was voluble, 
Paining with eloquence her balmy side ; 
As though a tongueless nightingale should swell 
Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell. 

A casement high and triple-arch'd there was. 
All garlanded with carven imageries 
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, 
And diamonded with panes of quaint device. 
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes 
As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings; 
And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries. 
And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, 
A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens 
and kings. 

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon. 
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast. 
As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon : 
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, 
And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 
And on her hair a glory, like a saint : 
She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, 
Save wings, for heaven : — Porphyro grew faint : 
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. 

Anon his heart revives : her vespers done. 
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair slie frees; 
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one ; 
Loosens her fragrant boddice ; by degrees 
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees : 
Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed, 
Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees, 
In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed, 
But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled. 

Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest. 
In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay. 
Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd 
Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away ; 
Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day ; 
Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain ; 
Clasp'd like a missal where swart Paynims pray; 
Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain. 
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again. 

Stolen to this paradise, and so entranced, 
Porphyro gazed upon her empty dress, 
And listen'd to her breathing, if it chanced 
To wake into a slumberous tenderness; 
Which when he heard, that minute did he bless, 



And breathed himself: then from the closet crept, 
Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness. 
And over the hush'd carpet, silent, stept. 
And 'tween the curtains peep'd, where, lo ! — how 
fast she slept. 

Then by the bedside, where the faded moon 
Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set 
A table, and, half-anguish'd, threw thereon 
A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet : — 
Oh for some drowsy Morphean amulet ! 
The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion, 
The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarionet, 
AflVay his ears, though but in dying tone : — 
The hall-door shuts again, and all the noise is gone. 

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep. 
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender'd. 
While he from forth the closet brought a heap 
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd ; 
With jellies soother than the creamy curd, 
And lucid syrops, tinct with cinnamon ; 
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr'd 
From Fez ; and spiced dainties, every one. 
From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon. 

These delicates he heap'd with glowing hand 
On golden dishes and in baskets bright 
Of wreathed silver : sumptuous they stand 
In the retired quiet of the night. 
Filling the chilly room with perfume light. — 
" And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake ! 
Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite : 
Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes' sake, 
Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache." 

Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved arm 
Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream 
By the dusk curtains: — 'twas a midnight charm 
Impossible to melt as iced stream : 
The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam ; 
Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies: 
It seem'd he never, never could redeem 
From such a steadfast spell his lady's eyes; 
So mused awhile, entoil'd in woofed fantasies. 

Awakening up, he took her hollow lute, — 
Tumultuous, — and, in chords that tenderest be, 
He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute, 
In Provence call'd, " La belle dame sans mercy ;" 
Close to her ear touching the melody ; — 
Wherewith disturb'd, she utter'd a soft moan : 
He ceased — she panted quick — and suddenly 
Her blue aflfrayed eyes wide open shone : 
Upon ills knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured 
stone. 

Her eyes were open, but she still beheld. 
Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep : 
There was a painful change, that nigh expell'd 
The blisses of her dream so pure and deep, 
At which fair Madeline began to weep, 
And moan forth witless words with many a sigh ; 
While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep ; 
Who knelt, with joined hands and piteous, eye. 
Fearing to move or speak, she look'd so dreamingly. 



JOHN KEATS. 



305 



" Ah, Porphyro !" said she, " but even now 
Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear, 
Made tunable with every sweetest vow ; 
And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear ; 
How changed thou art ! how pallid, chill, and drear! 
Give me that voice again, my Porphyro, 
Those looks immortal, those complainings dear ! 
Oh leave me not in this eternal wo. 
For if thou diest, my love, I know not where to go." 

Beyond a mortal man impassion'd far 
At these voluptuous accents, he arose, 
Ethereal, fiush'd, and like a throbbing star 
Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose ; 
Into her dream he melted, as the rose 
Blerideth its odour with the violet, — 
Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows 
Like love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet 
Against the window-panes; St. Agnes' moon hath 
set. 

'T is dark : quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet : 
"This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline !" 
'Tis dark : the iced gusts still rave and beat: 
" No dream, alas ! alas ! and wo is mine ! 
Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine. — 
Cruel! what traitor could thee hither bring! 
I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine. 
Though thou forsakest a deceived thing ; — 
A dove forlorn and lost with sick unpruned wing." 

« My Madeline ! sweet dreamer ! lovely bride ! 
Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest ? [dyed 1 
Thy beauty's shield, heart-shaped and vermeil 
Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest 
After so many hours of toil and quest, 
A famish'd pilgrim, — saved by miracle. 
Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest 
Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think'st well 
To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel." 

"Hark ! 'tis an elfin-storm from fairy-land, 
Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed : 
Arise — arise ! the morning is at hand ; — 
The bloated wassailers will never heed: — 
Let us away, my love, with happy speed ; 
There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see, 
Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead: 
Awake ! arise ! my love, and fearless be, 
For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee." 

She hurried at his words, beset with fears. 
For there were sleeping dragons all around, 
At glaring watch, perhaps, vi'ith ready spears — 
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found, — 
Li all the house was heard no human sound. 
A chain-dropp'd lamp was flickering by each door; 
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound, 
Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar ; 
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. 

They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall ; 
Like phantoms to the iron porch they glide, 
Where lay the porter, in uneasy sprawl, 
With a huge empty flagon by his side: 
The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide, 
But his sagacious eye an inmate owns: 
39 



By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide : — 
The chains lie silent on the foot-worn stones, 
The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans. 

And they are gone : ay, ages long ago 
These lovers fled away into the storm. 
That night the baron dreamt of many a wo. 
And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form 
Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm, 
Were long be-nightmared. Angela the old 
Died palsy-twitch'd, with meager face deform. 
The Beadsman, after thousand aves told, 
For aye unsought-for slept among his ashes cold. 



HYMN TO PAN. 

O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang 
From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth 
Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death, 
Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness ; 
Who lovest to see the hamadryads dress 
Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken; 
And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and 

hearken 
The dreary melody of bedded reeds — 
In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds 
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth, 
Bethinkmg thee, how melancholy loth 
Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx — do thou now, 
By thy love's milky brow ! 
By all the trembling mazes that she ran, 
Hear us, great Pan ! 

O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles 
Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles, 
What time thou wanderest at eventide 
Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side 
Of thine enmossed realms : O thou to whom 
Broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom 
Their ripen'd fruitage ; yellow-girted bees 
Their golden honeycombs ; our village leas 
Their f lirest blossom'd beans and poppied corn ; 
The chuckling linnet its five young unborn. 
To sing for tliee ; low creeping strawberries 
Their summer coolness ; pent up butterflies 
Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year 
All its completions — be quickly near. 
By every wind that nods the mountain pine, 
forester divine ! 

Thou, to whom every faun and satyr flies 
For willing service ; whether to surprise 
The squatted hare while in half-sleeping fit ; 
Or upward ragged precipices flit 
To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw ; 
Or by mvsterious enticement dravi'^ 
Bewilder'd shepherds to their path again ; 
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main. 
And gather up all fancifullest shells 
For thee to tumble into Naiad's cells. 
And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping; 
Or to delight thee with fontastic leaping. 
The while they pelt each other on the crown 
With silvery oak-apples, and fir-cones brown — 
By all the echoes that about thee ring. 
Hear us, O satyr king ! 



2c2 



^J 



306 



JOHN KEATS. 



O Hearkener to the loud-clapping shears, 
While ever and anon to his shorn peers 
A ram goes bleating : Winder of the horn, 
When snouted wild boars routing tender corn 
Anger our huntsman : Breather round our farms, 
To keep off mildews, and all weather harms: 
Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, 
That come a swooning over hollow grounds, 
And wither drearily on barren moors : 
Dread opener of the mysterious doors 
Leading to universal knowledge — see, 
Great son of Dryope, 

The many that are come to pay their vows 
With leaves about their brows ! 

Be still the unimaginable lodge 
For solitary thinkings ; such as dodge 
Conception to the very bourn of heaven, 
'J'hen leave the naked brain : be still the leaven. 
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth. 
Gives it a touch ethereal — a new birth : 
Be still a symbol of immensity ; 
A firmament reflected in a sea ; 
An element filling the space between ; 
An unknown — but no more : we humbly screen 
With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending. 
And giving out a shout most heaven-rending. 
Conjure thee to receive our humble Piean, 
Upon thy Mount Lycean ! 



ADONIS. 

I SEED not any hearing tire, 
By telling how the sea-born goddess pined 
For a mortal youth, and how she strove to bind 
Him all in all unto her doting self. 
AVho would not be so prison'd 1 but, fond elf. 
He was content to lot her amorous plea 
Faint through his car'^lcss arms ; content to see 
An unseized heaven dying at his feet ; 
Content, O fool ! to make a cold retreat, 
When on the pleasant grass such love, love-lorn. 
Lay sorrowing; when every tear was born 
Of diverse passion ; when her lips and eyes 
Were closed in sullen moisture, and quick sighs 
Came ves'd and pettish through her nostrils small. 
Hush I no exclaim — yet, justly might'st thou call 

Cui'ses upon his head I was half glad. 

But my poor mistress went distract and mad 
When the boar tusk'd him : so away she flew 
To Jove's high throne, and by her plainings drew 
Immortal tear-drops down the thunderer's beard ; 
Whereon it was decreed he should be rear'd 
Each summer-time to life. Lo ! this is he. 
That same Adonis, safe in the privacy 
Of this still region all his winter sleep. 
Ay, sleep ; for when our love-sick queen did weep 
Over his waned corse, the tremulous shower 
Heal'd up the wound, and, with a balmy power 
Medicined death to a lengthen'd drowsiness : 
The which she fills with visions, and doth dress 
In all this quiet luxury ; and hath set 
Us young immortals, without any let. 



To watch his slumber through. 'Tis wellnigh pass'd, 
Even to a moment's filling up, and fast 
She scuds with summer breezes, to pant through 
The first long kiss, warm firstling, to renew 
Embower'd sports in Cytherea's isle. 



TO HOPE. 

When by my solitary hearth I sit. 

And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom; 
When no fair dreams before my " mind's eye" flit. 

And the bare heath of life presents no bloom : 
Sweet Hope ! ethereal balm upon me shed. 
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head. 

Whene'er I wander at the fall of night, [ray. 

Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright 

Should sad Despondency my musings fright. 
And frown to drive fair Cheerfulness away, 

Peep with the moon-beams through the leafy roof. 

And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof. 

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair, 
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart, 

When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air, 
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart: 

Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright, 

And fright him, as th3 morning frightens night ! 

Whene'er the fate of those I hold most dear 
Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow, 

O bright-eyed Hope, my morbid fancy cheer; 
Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow: 

Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed. 

And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head ! 

Should e'er unhappy love my bosom pain, 
From cruel parents, or relentless fair, 

let me think it is not quite in vain 

To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air ! 

Sweet Hope ! ethereal balm upon me shed, 

And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head. 

In the long vista of the years to roll, 

Let me not see our country's honour fade ! 

O let me see our land retain he>- soul ! 

Her pride, her freedom ; and not freedom's shade. 

From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed, 

Beneath th}' pinions canopy my head ! 

Let me not see the patriot's high bequest. 
Great I^iberty ! how great in plain attire ! 

With the base purple of a court oppress'd. 
Bowing her head, and ready to expire : 

But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings 

That fill the skies with silver glitterings ! 

And as, in sparkling majesty, a star 

Gilds the bright summit of some gloomy cloud ; 
Brightening the half-veil'd face of heaven afar; 

So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud. 
Sweet Hope ! celestial influence round me shed, 
Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head. 



JOHN KEATS. 



307 



SOVEREIGNTY OF LOVE. 

O SOVEREIGN power of love ! O grief ! Obalm! 
All records, saving thine, come cool and calm, 
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years ; 
For others, good or bad, hatred and tears 
Have become indolent; but touching thine, 
One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine. 
One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days. 
The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their 

blaze, 
Stiir-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades, 
Struggling, and blood, and shrieks — all dimly fades 
Into some backward corner of the brain ; 
Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain 
The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet. 
Hence, pageant history ! hence, gilded cheat ! 
Swart planet in the universe of deeds ! 
Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds 
Along the pebbled shore of memory ; 
Many old rotten-timber'd boats there be 
Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified 
To goodly vessels ; many a sail of pride, 
And golden-keel'd, is left iinlaunch'd and dry. 
But wherefore this? What care, though owl did 
Aliout the great Athenian admiral's masll [fly 
What care, though striding Alexander past 
The Indus with his Macedonian numbers? 
Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers 
The glutted Cyclops, what care ! — Juliet leaning 
Amid her window-flowers, — sighing, weaning 
Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow. 
Doth more avail than these : the silver flow 
Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen, 
Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den. 
Are things to brood on with more ardency 
Than the death-dav of empires. 



ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. 

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk; 
'T is not through envy of thy happy lot. 
But being too happy in thy happiness, — 
That thou, light-winged dryad of the trees, 
In some melodious plot 
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 

for a draught of vintage, that hath been 

Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, 
Tasting of Flora and the country-green. 

Dance, r.nd Provenpal song, and sun-burnt mirth! 
for a beaker full of the warm south, 
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 
And purple-stained mouth; 
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 
And with thee fade away into the forest dim : 

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 

What thou among the leaves hast never known, 



I The weariness, the fever, and the fret. 

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan ; 
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, 
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and 
dies ; 
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow, 
And leaden-eyed despairs; 
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 
Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 

Away ! away ! for I will fly to thee. 

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards. 
But on the viewless wings of poesy. 

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards; 
Already with thee ! tender is the night, 

And haply the queen-moou is on her throne, 
Cluster'd around by all her starry fays; 
But here there is no light, 
Save what from lieaven is with the breezes blown 
Thjough verdurous gloor^is and winding mossy 
ways. 

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, 
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 

Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree v^'ild ; 
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; 
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves ; 
And mid-May's eldest child. 
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine. 
The murmurous haunt of ihes on summer eves. 

Darkling I listen ; and, for many a time, 

I have been half in love with easeful death, 
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, 

To take into the air my quiet breath. 
Now more than ever seems it rich to d;e. 
To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 
In such an ecstasy ! 
Still wouldiit thou sing, and I have ears in vain, 
To thy high requiem become a sod. 

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird ! 

No hungry generations tread thee down ; 
The voice I hear this passing night was heard 

In ancient days by emperor and clown : 
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for 
home, 
She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 
The same that oft-times hath 
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in fairy land forlorn. 

Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell 

To toll me back from thee to my sole self. 
Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well 
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. 
Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades 
Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 
Up the hill-side ; and now 't is buried deep 
In the next valley-glades : 
Was it a vision or a waking dream T 

Fled is that music : — Do I wake or sleep 1 



308 



JOHN KEATS. 



TO AUTUMN. 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ! 

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun ; 
Conspiring with him how to load and bless [run; 
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves 
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, 
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel-shells 
With a sweet kernel ; to set budding more, 
And still more, later flowers for the bees. 
Until they think warm days will never cease, 

For summer has o'erbrinnn'd their clammy 
cells. 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store ? 

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind ; 
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, [hook 

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy 
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers ; 
And sometimes like a gleaner thou doist keep 

Steady thy laden head across a brook ; 

Or by a cider-press, with patient look, 

Thou watchest the last oczings hours by hours. 

Where are the songs of spring] Ay, where are they? 

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, — 
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day. 

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; 
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 

Among the river sallows, borne aloft 

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; 
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft 

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, 
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 



ODE ON A GRECIAN URN. 

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness! 

Thou foster-child of 'Silence and slow Time, 
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : 
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 

Of deities or mortals, or of both, 

In Tempo or the dales of Arcady ? [loth? 

What men or gods are these 1 What maidens 
What mad pursuit 1 What struggle to escape "? 
What pipes and timbrels 1 What wild ecstasy? 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 

Are sweeter ; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on ; 
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd. 

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone : 
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare ; 

Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss. 

Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve ; 

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair ! 

Ah, happy, happy boughs ! that cannot shed 
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu ; 



And, happy melodist, unwearied. 

For ever piping songs for ever new ; 
More hapi)y love ! more happy, happy love ! 
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, 
For ever panting and for ever young; 
All breathing human passion far above, 

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, 
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 

Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? 

To what green altar, O mysterious priest, 
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest ? 
What little town by river or sea-shore. 
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel. 

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? 
And, little town, thy streets for evermore 

Will silent be ; and not a soul to tell 
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 

O Attic shape ! Fair attitude ! with brede 

Of marble men and maidens overwrought, 
With forest branches and the trodden weed ; 

Thou, silent form ! dost tease us out of thought 
As doth eternity : Cold pastoral ! ^ 

When old age shall this generation waste, 
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other wo 
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 



ON FIRST SEEING CHAPMAN'S HOMER. 

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, 
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; 
Round many western islands have I been 

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne : 
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : 
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken ; 

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 



ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET. 

Thk poetry of earth is never dead: 

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, 
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run 

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead : 

That is the grasshopper's — he takes the lead 
In summer luxury, — he has never done 
With his delights, for when tired out with fun, 

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. 

The poetry of earth is ceasing never : 

On a lone winter evening, when the frost 
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills 

The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever 
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, 
The grasshopper's among some grassy hills. 



JOHN KEATS. 



309 



REGALITIES. 

Tkf.re are who lord it o'er their fellow-men 
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen 
Their baaing vanities, to browse away 
The comfortable green and juicy hay 
From human pastures; or, O torturing fact! 
Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd 
Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe 
Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes. With not one tinge 
Of sanctuary splendour, nor a sight 
Able to face an owl's, they still are diglit 
By the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests, 
And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts, 
Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount 
To their spirit's perch, their being's high account, 
Their tip-top nothings, theirdull skies, their thrones, 
Amid the fierce, intoxicating tones 
Of trumpets, shoutings, and beiabour'd drums, 
And sudden cannon. xA.hl how all this hums, 
In wakeful ears, like uproar past and gone — 
Like thunder-clouds that spake to Babylon, 
And set those old Chaldeans to their tasks. 



ADONIS SLEEPING. 

.A CHAMBER, myrtle-wall'd, embower'd high, 
Full of light, incense, tender minstrelsy. 
And more of beautiful and strange beside: 
For on a silken couch of rosy pride, 
In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth 
Of fondest beauty ; fonder, in fair sooth, 
Than sighs could fathom, or contentment reach ; 
And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach, 
Or ripe October's faded marigolds. 
Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds — 
Not hiding up an Apollonian curve 
Of neck and shoulder, nor the tenting swerve 
Of knee from knee, nor ankles pointing light; 
But rather, giving them to the lill'd sight 
Officiously. Sideway his faced reposed 
On one white arm, and tenderly unclosed. 
By tendcrest pressure, a faint damask mouth 
To slumbery pout; just as the morning south 
Disparts a dew-lipp'd rose. Above his head, 
Four lily stalks did their white honours wed 
To make a coronal ; and round him grew 
All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue, 
Together intertwined and tramell'd fresh ; 
The vine of glossy sprout ; the ivy mesh 
Shading its Ethiop berries ; and woodliine, 
Of velvet leaves and bugle-blooms divine; 
Convolvulus in streaked vases flush ; 
The creeper, mellowing for an autumn blush ; 
And virgin's bower, trailing airily; 
With others of the sisterhood. Hard by 
Stood serene Cupids watching silently. 
One, kneeling to a lyre, touched the strings, 
Muffling to death the pathos with his wings ; 
And, ever and anon, uprose to look 
At the youth's slumber; while anotlier took 
A willow bough, distilling odorous dew. 
And sliook it on his hair ; another flew 
In through the woven roof, and fluttering-wise 
Rain'd violets upon his sleeping eyes. 



A FAIRY SCENE FROM ENDYMION 

Palacks of mottled ore. 
Gold dome, and crystal wall, and turquoise floor, 
Black polish'd porticoes of awful shade, 
And, at the last, a diamond balustrade, 
Leading afar past wild magnificence, 
Spiral through ruggedest loop-holes, and thence 
Stretching across a void, then guiding o'er 
Enormous chasms, where, all foam and roar, 
Streams subterranean tease their granite beds; 
Then heighten'd just above the silvery heads 
Of a thousand fountains, so that he could dash 
The waters with his spear ; but at the splash 
Done heedlessly, those spouting columns rose 
Sudden a poplar's height, and 'gan to inclose 
His diamond path with fretwork streaming round 
Alive, and dazzling, and with a sound. 
Haply, like dolphin tumults, when sweet shells 
Welcome the float of Thetis. Long he dwells 
On this delight; for, every minute's space, 
The streams with changed magic interlace ; 
Sometimes like delicatest lattices, 
Cover'd with crystal vines; then weeping trees. 
Moving about as in a gentle wind. 
Which, in a wink, to watery gauze refined, 
Pour'd into shapes of curtain'd canopies, 
Spangled, and rich with liquid broideries 
Of flowers, peacocks, swans, and naiads fair. 
Swifter than lightning went these wonders rare; 
And then the water, into stubborn streams 
Collecting, mimick'd the wrought oaken beams, 
Pillars, and frieze, and high fantastic roof, 
Of those dusk places in limes far aloof 
Cathedrals call'd. 



SLEEP. 



O MAGTC sleep! O comfortable bird. 
That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind 
Till it is hush'd and smooth ! O unconfined 
Restraint ! imprison'd liberty ! great key 
To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy. 
Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves. 
Echoing grottoes, full of tumbling waves 
And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world 
Of silvery enchantment ! — who, unfurl'd 
Beneath thy drowsy wing, a triple hour 
But renovates and lives ? 



SCENES OF BOYHOOD. 

The spirit culls 
Unfaded amaranth, when wild it strays 
Through the old garden-ground of boyish days. 
A little onward ran the very stream 
By which he took his first soft poppy dream ; 
And on the very bark 'gainst which he leant 
A crescent he had carved, and round it spent 
His skill in little stars. The teeming tree 
Had swollen and green'd the pious charactery, 
But not ta'en out. 



310 



JOHN KEATS. 



THL MOON. 

I HERE swear, 
Eterne Apollo ! that thy sister fair 
Is of all these the gentlier mightiest. 
When thy gold breath is misting in the west, 
She unobserved steals unto her throne, 
And there she sits most meek and most alone ; 
As if she had not pomp subservient ; 
As if thine eye, high poet ! was not bent 
Towards her with the muses in tliine heart; 
As if the ministering stars kept not apart, 
Waiting for silver-footed messengers. 
O moon ! the oldest shades 'mong oldest trees 
Feel palpitations when thou lookest in: 
O moon ! old boughs lisp forth a holier din 
The while they feel thine airy fellowship. 
Thou dost bless every where, with silver lip, 
Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping kine, 
Couch'd in thy brightness, dream of fields divine: 
Innumerable mountains rise, and rise, 
Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes, 
And yet thy benediction passeth not 
One obscure hiding-place, one little spot 
Where pleasure may be sent : the nested wren 
Has th}"- fair face within its tranquil ken, 
And from beneath a sheltering ivy-leaf 
Takes glimpses of thee ; thou art a relief 
To the poor patient oyster, where it sleeps 
Within its pearly house. — The mighty deeps. 
The monstrous sea is thine — the myriad sea! 

moon ! far-spooming ocean bows to thee, 
And Tellus feels his forehead's cumbrous load 

What is there in thee, moon ! that thou should'st 
My heart so potently? When yet a child [move 

1 oft have dried my tears when thou hast smiled. 
Thou seem'dst my sister; hand in hand we went 
From eve to morn across the firmament. 

No apples would I gather from the tree. 
Till thou hadst cool'd their checks delicionsly; 
No tumbling water ever spake romance, 
But when my eyes with thine thereon could dance: 
No woods were green enough, no bowers divine, 
Until thou liftedst up thine eyelids fine : 
In sowing time ne'er would I dibble take. 
Or drop a seed, till thou wast wide awake ; 
And, in the summer-tide of blossoming, 
No otie but thee hath heard me blithely sing 
And mesh my dewy flowers all the night. 
No melody was like a passing spright 
If it went not to solemnize thy reign. 
Yes, in my boyhood, every joy and pain 
By thee were fashion'd to the self-same end ; 
And as I grew in years, still didst thou blend 
With all my ardours : thou wast the deep glen ; 
Thou wast the mountain-top — the sage's pen — 
The poet's harp — the voice of friends — the sun ; 
Thou wast the river — thou wast glory won ; 
Thouwast my clarion's blast — thou wast mysteed — 
My goblet full of wine — my topmost deed : — 
Thou wast the charm of women, lovely moon ! 
O what a wild and harmonized tune 
. My spirit struck from all the beautiful ! 
On some bright essence could I lean, and lull 
Myself to immortality. 



ROBIN HOOD. 

TO A FrUEND, 

No ! those days are gone away. 
And their hours are old and gray, 
And their minutes buried ail 
Under the down-trodden pall 
Of the leaves of many year*: 
Many times have winter's shears, 
l^rozen north, and chilling east, 
Sounded tempests to the feast 
Of the forest's whispering fleeces, 
Siiice men knew nor rent nor leases* 

No ! the bugle sounds no more, 
And the twanging bow no more ; 
Silent is the ivory shrillj 
Past the heath and up the hill ; 
There is no mid^forest laugh, 
Where lone echo gives the half 
To som.e wight, amazed to hear 
Jesting, deep in forest drear. 

On the fairest time of June 
You may go, with sun or moon 
Or the seven stars to light you, 
Or the polar ray to right you ; 
But you never may behold 
Little John, or Robin bold ; 
Never one, of all the clan. 
Thrumming on at> empty can 
Some old hunting ditty, while 
He doth his green way beguile 
To fair hostess Merriment, 
Down beside the pasture Trent; 
For he left the merry tale. 
Messenger for spicy ale. 

Gone, the merry morris din ; 
Gone, the song of Gamelyn ; 
Gone, the tough-belted outlav?' 
Idling in the "grene shawe ;" 
All are gone away and past I 
And if Robin should be cast 
Sudden from his turfed grave. 
And if Marian should have 
Once again her forest days. 
She would weep, and he would craze: 
He would swear, for all his oaks. 
Fallen beneath the dockyard strokes, 
Have rotted on the briny seas ; 
She would weep that her wild bees 
Sang not to her — strange! that honey 
Can't be got without hard money ! 

So it is : yet let us sing, 
Honour to the old bow-string! 
Honour to the bugle-horn ! 
Honour to the woods unshorn ! 
Honour to the Lincoln green ! 
Honour to the archer keen ! 
Honour to tight little John, 
And the horse he rode upon ! 
Honour to bold Robin Hood, 
Sleeping in the underwood ! 
Honour to maid Marian, 
And to all the Sherwood clan ! 
Though their days have hurried by. 
Let us two a burden try. 



JOHN KEATS. 



311 



FANCY. 

Ever let the fancy roam, 

Pleasure never is at home: 

At a touch sweet pleasure meltelh, 

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth; 

Then let winged Fancy wander 

Through the thoughts still spread beyond her: 

Open wide the mind's cage-door, 

She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar. 

O sweet Fancy ! let her loose ; 

Summer's joys are spoilt by use, 

And tiie enjoying of the spring 

Fades as does its blossoming; 

Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too. 

Blushing through the mist an<l dew, 

Cloys with tasting: what do then] 

Sit thee by the ingle, when 

The sear faggot blazes brigh't, 

Spirit of a winter's night; 

When the soundless earth is muffled, 

And the caked snow is shuffled 

From the ploughboy's heavy shoon ; 

When the night doth meet tlie noon 

In a dark conspiracy 

To banish even from her sky. 

Sit thee there, and send abroad. 

With a mind self-overawed. 

Fancy, high-comniission'd: — send her! 

She has vassals to attend her: 

She will bring, in spite of frost. 

Beauties that the earth hath lost ; 

She will bring thee, altogether. 

All deliglits of summer weather; 

All the buds and bells of May, 

From dewy sward or thorny spray; 

All the heaped autumn's wealth, 

With a still, mysterious stealth: 

She will mix these pleasures up 

Like three fit wines in a cup, 

And thou shalt quaff it: — thou shall hear 

Distant harvest-carols clear; 

Rustic of the reaped corn; 

Sweet birds antheming the morn : 

And, in the same moment — hark ! 

'Tis tiie early April lark. 

Or the rooks, with busy caw. 

Foraging for sticks and straw. 

Thou shalt. at one glance, behold 

The daisy and the marigold ; 

Wiiite-plumed lilies, and the first 

Hedge-rrrown primrose that hath burst; 

Shaded hyacinth, alway 

Sapphire queen of the mid-May; 

And every leaf and every tlower 

Pearled with the self-same shower. 

'i'hou shalt see the field-mouse peep 

Meager from its celled sleep; 

And the snake all winter-thin 

Cast on sunny bank its skin ; 

Freckled nest-eggs thon shalt see 

Hatching in the hawthorn tree. 

When the hen-bird's wing dost rest 

Quiet on her mossy nest; 



Then the hurry and alarm 
When the bee-hive casts its swarm ; 
Acorns ripe down-pattering. 
While the autumn breezes sing. 

Oh, sweet Fancy ! let her loose ; 

Every thing is spoilt by use : 

Where's the cheek that doth not fade. 

Too much gazed at! where's the maid 

Whose lip mature is ever new? 

Where's the eye, however blue. 

Doth not weary 1 where's the face 

One would meet in every place ] 

Where's the voice, however soft, 

One would hear so very oft 1 

At a touch sweet pleasure melteth 

Like to bubbles when vain {)elteth. 

Jjct, then, winged Fancy find 

Thee a mistress to thy mind : 

Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter, 

Ere the god of torment taught her 

How to frown and how to chide ; 

With a waist and with a side 

White as Hebe's, when her zone 

Slipt its golden clasp, and down 

Fell her kirtle to her feet, 

^A''lliie she held the goblet sweet. 

And Jove grew languid. — Break the mesh 

C)f the fancy's silken leash ; 

Quickly break her prison-string. 

And such joys as these she'll bring. — 

Let the winged fancy roam. 

Pleasure never is at home. 



LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN. 

\ Souls of poets dead and gone. 
What elysium have ye known, 
Happv field or mossy cavern. 
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern! 
Have ye tippled drink more fine 
Than mine host's Canary wine I 
Or are fruiis of Paradise 
Sweeter than those dainty pies 
Of venison ! O generous food ! 
Drest as though bold Robin Hood 
Would, with his maid Marian, 
Sup and bowse from horn and can. 

I have heard that on a day 

Mine host's sign-board flew away, 

Nobody knew whither, till 

An astrologer's old quiil 

To a sheepskin gave the story, — 

Said he saw you in your glory, 

Underneath a new-old sign 

Sipping beverage divine. 

And )iledging with contented smack 

The Mermaid in the Zodiac. 

Souls of poets dead and gone. 
What elysium have ye known, 
Happy field or mossy cavern. 
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern T 



THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY. 



Thomas Haynes Bayly was born in the 
city of Bath, in the year 1797. His parents 
were connected with some of the first families 
of the king-dom, and on the completion of his 
education he entered under favourable auspices 
the circles of the most refined and brilliant 
society in the world. At twenty-eight he was 
married to an accomplished and beautiful wo- 
man, and soon afterward retired to a country- 
seat in Sussex, where he continued in quiet- 
ness and ease until 1831, when an unexpected 
misfortune changed the current of his life. 
His wife had brought him a considerable 
fortune, but it had been expended ; his father 
now suddenly became a bankrupt and left the 
country, and the income settled on the poet at 
his marriage was never after paid. Litera- 
ture had hitherto been his amusement, it was 
from this time his profession. He had already 
written for the stage and the boudoir, he now 
made the country everywhere vocal with his 
comedies and his songs. To the end of his 
life he was one of the most industrious as 
well as one of the most successful authors of 
England. His early education and habits, 
however, had unfitted him for his new posi- 
tion ; he could not fall back into a sufficiently 
economical course until the pressure of cir- 
cumstances had impoverished him be3'^ond a 
remedy; and though the amount received for 
his various writings was large, he was always 
embarrassed. Excitement and suffering at 
length induced disease, and he died, at 
Cheltenham, on the twenty-second day of 
April, 1839. 

Beside his lyrical pieces he wrote two or 
three novels, a large number of tales and 
sketches in the " New Monthly" and other 
magazines, and more than thirty dramas, of 
which "Perfection," "Tom Noddy's Secret," 
" Sold for a Song," and others, have been suc- 
cessfully produced in the American theatres. 

With the exception of INIoore, Bayly was 
probably the most popular English song-wri- 
ter of his age ; and even the author of the 
" Irish Melodies" — unequalled as he is for 
graceful imagery and delicately turned expres- 



sion — never has been more universally a 
favourite. " Oh, no ! we never mention her," 
" The Soldier's Tear," " She wore a Wreath 
of Roses," and many more of his songs, are 
familiar wherever the language is spoken; 
they are of that class which, 

" in his solitude, 
The singer singelh to his own sad heart ;" 

— simple, natural, graceful and tender — de- 
scriptive of the feelings of all, in a language 
which all can appreciate and understand. An 
English critic supposes that he is indebted 
for much of his popularity to his former posi- 
tion in society ; but the estimation in which 
which his compositions are held in this coun- 
try, where his personal history was unknown, 
shows the opinion to be erroneous. It is not 
always easy to discover the true causes of an 
author's success. Bayly was certainly not 
one of the first poets of his time — the century 
in which more true and enduring poetry was 
written than in any other since the invention 
of letters; and if he had essayed any thing of 
a more ambitious character than the simple 
ballad, doubtless he would have failed ; but 
by her who dallies with a coronet and the 
maiden at her spinning-wheel, by the soldier, 
the student, and the cottage Damon, his melo- 
dies are sung with equal feeling and admira- 
tion. Many have written "songs," exquisitely 
beautiful as poems, which are never sung; 
and others, like Dibdin, have produced songs 
for particular classes; but Bayly touches the 
universal heart. He is never mawkish, never 
obscure, and rarely meretricious ; his verse is 
singularly harmonious ; every word seems 
chosen for its musical sound ; and his modu- 
lation is unsurpassed. Our rough English 
flows from his pen as smoothly as the soft 
Italian from that of Bojardo or Metastasio. 

Two editions of Mr. Bayly's poems have 
been publislied in the present year; the 
first in Philadelphia, and the last, under the 
supervision of his widow, in London. No 
collection has ever been made of his tales and 
essays or dramatic writings. 



THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY. 



313 



THE FIRST GRAY HAIR. 

The matron at her mirror, 

With her hand upon her brow, 
Sits gazing on her lovely face, — 

Ay, lovely even now ; 
Why doth she lean upon her hand 

With such a look of care 1 
Why steals that tear across her cheek 1 

She sees her first gray hair. 

Time from her form hath ta'en away 

But little of its grace; 
His touch #f thought hath dignified 

The beauty of her face ; 
Yet she might mingle in the dance, 

Where maidens gaily trip. 
So bright is still her hazel eyo, 

So beautiful her lip. 

The faded form is often mark'd 

By sorrow more than years, — 
The wrinkle on the cheek may be 

The course of secret tears ; 
The mournful lip may murmur of 

A love it ne'er confest, 
And the dimness of the eye betray 

A heart that cannot rest. 

But she hath been a happy wife: 

The lover of her youth 
May proudly claim the smile that pays 

The trial of his truth ; 
A sense of shght, — of loneliness, — 

Hath never banish'd sleep : 
Her life hath been a cloudless one ; 

Then wherefore doth she weep 1 

She look'd upon her raven locks. 

What thoughts did they recall 1 
Oh ! not of nights when they were deck'd 

For banquet or for ball ; 
They brought back thoughts of early youth, 

Ere she had learnt to check. 
With artificial wreaths, the curls 

That sported o'er her neck. 

She seem'd to feel her mother's hand 

Pass lightly through her hair, 
And draw it from her brow, to leave 

A kiss of kindness there ; 
She seem'd to view her father's smile, 

And feel the playful touch 
That sometimes feign'd to steal away 

The curls she prized so much. 

And now she sees her first gray hair ! 

Oh, deem it not a crime 
For her to weep, when she beholds 

The first footmark of Time I 
She knows that, one by one, those mute 

Mementos will increase, 
And steal youth, beauty, strength away. 

Till life itself shall cease. 

'Tis not the tear of vanity 
For beauty on the wane ; 

40 



Yet, though the blossom may not sigh 

To bud and bloom again — 
It cannot but remember, 

With a feeling of regret. 
The spring for ever gone, — 

The summer sun so nearly set. 

Ah, lady ! heed the monitor ! 

Thy mirror tells thee truth ; 
Assume the matron's folded veil. 

Resign the wreath of youth : 
Go ! bind it on thy daughter's brow, 

In her thou 'It still look fair — 
'Twere well would all learn wisdom who 

Behold the first gray hair ! 



THE SOLDIER'S TEAR. 

Upon the hill he turn'd 

To take a last fond look 
Of the valley and tlie village churcli 

And the cottage by the brook; 
He listen'd to the sounds. 

So familiar to his ear. 
And the soldier leant upon his sword, 

And wiped away a tear. 

Beside that cottage porch 

A girl was on her knees. 
She iield aloft a snowy scarf. 

Which flutter'd in the breeze ; 
She breath'd a prayer for him, 

A prayer he could not hear, 
But he paused to bless her, as she knelt, 

And wiped away a tear. 

He turn'd and left the spot, 

Oh, do not deem him weak ; 
For dauntless was the soldier's heart. 

Though tears were on his cheek; 
Go watch the foremost rank 

In danger's dark career. 
Be sure the hand most daring there 

Has wiped away a tear. 



WITHER AWAY. 

WiTHKR away, green leaves. 

Wither away, sweet flowers ; 
For me in vain young Spring has thrown' 

Her mantle o'er the bowers : 
Sing not to me, gay birds. 

Borne in bright plumage hither ; 
The heart recoils from pleasure's voice 

When all its fond hopes wither ! 

Wither away, my friends, 

Whom I have loved sincerely ; 
'Tis hard to sigh for the silent tomb 

Asa place of rest, so early ! 
While others prize the rose, 

The cypress wreath I '11 gather; 
The heart recoils from pleasure's voice 

When all its fond hopes wither. 
2D 



314 



THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY. 



I'M SADDEST WHEN I SING. 

You think I have a merry heart, 

Because my songs are gay ; 
But, oh ! they all were taught to me 

By friends now fur away ; 
The bird retains his silver note, 

Though bondage chains his wing; 
His song is not a happy one, — 

I'm saddest when I sing ! 

I heard them first in that sweet home 

I never more shall see, 
And now each song of joy has got 

A plaintive turn for me I 
Alas ! 'tis vain in winter time 

To mock the songs of spring. 
Each note recalls some wither'd leaf, — 

I 'm saddest when I sing ! 

Of all the friends I used to love, 

My harp remains alone, 
Its faithful voice still seems to be 

An echo of my own : 
My tears, when I bend over it, 

Will fall upon its string, 
Yet those who hear me, little think 

I'm saddest when I sing ! 



I NEVER WAS A FAVOURITE. 

I jfF.VEn was a favourite, — 

My mother never smiled 
On me, with half the tenderness 

That bless'd her fairer child : 
I've seen her kiss my sister's cheek, 

While fondled on her knee ; 
I've turn'd away, to hide my tears, — 

There was no kiss for me ! 

And yet I strove to please with all 

My little store of sense ; 
I strove to please, — and infancy 

Can rarely give ofltjnce : 
But when my artless effijrts met 

A cold, ungentle check, 
I did not dare to throw myself 

In tears upon her neck ! 

How blessed are the beautiful ! 

Love watches o'er their birth ; 
Oh, beauty ! in my nursery 

I learn'd to know thy worth : 
For even there I often felt 

Forsaken and forlorn ; 
And wish'd — for others wish'd it too — 

I never had been born ! 

I'm sure I was affectionate ; 

But in my sister's face 
There was a look of love, that claim'd 

A smile or an embrace : 
But when I raised my lip to meet 

The pressure children prize. 
None knew the feelings of my heart, — 

They spoke not in my eyes. 



But, oh ! that heart too keenly felt 

The anguish of neglect ; 
I saw my sister's lovely form 

With gems and roses deck'd 
I did not covet them ; but oft, 

When wantonly reproved, 
I envied her the privilege 

Of being so beloved. 

But soon a time of triumph came, — 

A time of sorrow too ; 
For sickness o'er my sister's form 

Her venom'd mantle threw ; 
The features, once so beautiful. 

Now wore the hue of death ; 
And former friends shrank fearfully 
From her infectious breath. 

'Twas then, unwearied day and night, 

I watch'd beside her bed ; 
And fearlessly upon my breast 

I pillow'd her poor head. 
She lived ! — and loved me for my care,- 

My grief was at an end ; 
I was a lonely being once. 

But now I have a friend. 



SHE WORE A WREATH OF ROSES. 

She wore a wreath of roses 

The night that first we met. 
Her lovely face was smiling 

Beneath her curls of jet ; 
Her foo'istep had the lightness 

Her voice the joyous tone. 
The tokens of a youthful heart. 

Where sorrow is unknown ; 
I saw her but a moment — 

Yet, methinks, I see her now. 
With the wreath of summer flowers 

Upon her snowy brow. 

A wreath of orange blossoms, 

When next we met, she wore ; 
The expression of her features 

Was more thoughtful than before : 
And standing by her side was one 

Who strove, and not in vain. 
To soothe her, leaving that dear home 

She ne'er might view again. 
I saw her but a moment — 

Yet, methinks, I see her now, 
With the wreath of orange blossoms 

Upon her snowy brow. 

• And once again I see that brow. 

No bridal wreath is there, 
The widow's sombre cap conceals 

Her once luxuriant hair; 
She weeps in silent solitude. 

And there is no one near 
To press her hand within his own, 

And wipe away the tear. 
I see her broken-hearted ! 

Yet, methinks, I see her now 
In the pride of youth and beauty, 

With a garland on her brow. 



THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY. 



315 



THE ROSE THAT ALL ARE PRAISING. 

The rose that all are praising 

Is not the rose for me ; 
Too many eyes are gazing 
Upon the costly tree ; 
But there 's a rose in yonder glen, 
That shuns the gaze of other men, 
For me its blossom raising, — 
Oil ! that 's the rose for me. 

The gem a king might covet 

Is not the gem for me ; 
From darkness who would move it. 
Save that the world may see 1 
But I've a gem that shuns display. 
And next my heart worn every day, 
So dearly do I love it, — 

Oh ! that's the gem for me. 

Gay birds in cages pining 

Are not the birds for me ; 
Those plumes, so brightly shining. 
Would fain fly off from thee : 
But I've a bird that gayly sings; 
Though free to rove, she folds her wings. 
For me her flight resigning, — 
Oh ! that 's the bird for me. 



SHE NEVER BLAMED HIM. 

She never blamed him, never; 

But received him, when he came. 
With a welcome kind as ever, 

And she tried to look the same ; 
But vainly she dissembled — 

For whene'er she tried to smile, 
A tear unbidden, trembled. 

In her blue eye all the while. 

She knew that she was dying. 

And she dreaded not her doom; 
She never thought of sighing 

O'er her beauty's blighted bloom. 
She knew her cheek was alter'd. 

And she knew her eye was dim ; 
Her voice, though, only falter'd 

When she spoke of losing hira. 

'T is true that he had lured her 

From the isle where she was born — 
'T is true he had inured her 

To the cold world's cruel scorn ; 
But yet she never blamed him 

For the anguish she had known ; 
And though she seldom named him, 

Yet she thought of him alone. 

She sigh'd when he caress'd her, 

For she knew that they must part; 
She spoke not when he prcss'd her 

To his young and panting heart. 
The banners waved around her. 

And she heard the bugle's sound — 
They pass'd — and strangers found her 

Cold and lifeless on the ground. 



SHE WOULD NOT KNOW ME. 

She would not know me were she now to view me; 
My heart was gay, when long ago she knew me ; 
My songs were daily tuned to some gay measure, 
And all my visions were of future pleasure; 
Oh ! tell her not that grief could thus o'erthrow me. 
But let her pass me by — she will not know me. 

In these sad accents she will ne'er discover 
The cheerful voice of him who was her lover; 
Nor vv-ill these features in their gloom remind her 
Of the gay smile they wore vi'hen she was kinder: 
Oh ! tell her not that grief could thus o'erthrow me, 
But let her pass me by — she will not know me. 

'T would pain her, did she note my deep dejection) 
To know that she had crush'd such fond affection : 
And not for all the world shall my distresses 
Chase from her heart the joy it still possesses; 
Oh ! tell her not that grief could thus o'erthrow me, 
But let her pass me by — she will not know me. 



THE OLD KIRK YARD. 

Oh ! come, come with me, to the old kirk yard, 
I well know the path through the soft green sward ; 
Friends slumber there we were wont to regard, 
We'll trace out their names in the old kirk yard. 
Oh ! mourn not for them, their grief is o'er, 
Oh ! weep not for them, they weep no more. 
For deep is their sleep, though cold and hard 
Their pillow may be in the old kirk yard. 

I know it is in vain, when friends depart. 

To breathe kind words to a broken heart; 

I know that the joy of life seems marr'd 

When we follow them home to the old kirk yard. 

But were I at rest beneath yon tree, 

Why shouldst thou weep, dear love, for me ; 

I'm wayworn and sad, ah ! why then retard 

The rest that I seek in the old kirk yard 1 



GRIEF WAS SENT THEE FOR THY 
GOOD. 

Some there are who seem exempted 

From the doom incurr'd by all ; 
Are they not more sorely tempted 1 

Are they not the first to fall ? 
As a mother's firm denial 

Checks her infant's wayward mood. 
Wisdom lurks in every trial — 

Grief was sent thee for thy good. 

In the scenes of former pleasure. 

Present anguish hast thou felt 1 
O'er thy fond heart's dearest treasure 

As a mourner hast thou knelt ? 
In the hour of deep aflliction, 

liCt no impious thought intrude. 
Meekly bow with this conviction, 

Grief was sent thee for thy good. 



316 THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY. ' 


I TURN TO THEE IN TIME OF NEED. 


ISLE OF BEAUTY, FARE THEE WELL ! 


I TUHX to thee in time of need, 


Shades of evening, close not o'er us. 


And never turn in vain ; 


Leave our lonely bark awhile ! 


I see thy fond and fearless smile, 


Morn, alas ! will not restore us 


And hope revives again. 


Yonder dim and distant isle ; 


It gives me strength to struggle on. 


Still my fancy can discover 


Whate'er the strife may be; 


Sunny spots where friends may dwell ; 


And if again my courage fail. 


Darker shadows round us hover. 


Again I turn to thee. 


Isle of Beauty, fare thee well ! 


Thy timid beauty charm'd me first ; 


'Tis the hour when happy faces 


I breathed a lover's vow. 


Smile around the taper's light; 


But little thought to find the friend 


Who will fill our vacant places ? 


Whose strength sustains me now ; 


Who will sing our songs to-night 1 


I deem'd thee made for summer skies, 


Through the mist that floats above us. 


But in the stormy sea, 


Faintly sounds the vesper bell. 


Deserted by all former friends, 


Like a voice from those who love us. 


Dear love, I turn to thee. 


Breathing, fondly, fare thee well ! 


Should e'er some keener sorrow throw 


When the waves are round me breaking, 


A shadow o'er my mind ; 


As I pace the deck alone. 


And should I, thoughtless, breathe to thee 


And my eye in vain is seeking 


One word that is unkind ; 


Some green leaf to rest upon ; 


Forgive it, love ! thy smile will set 


What would not I give to wander 


My better feelings free ; 


Where my old companions dwell 1 


And with a look of boundless love, 


Absence makes the heart grow fonder, 


I still shall turn to thee. 


Isle of Beauty, fare thee well ! 

* 


♦ 

OH NO ! WE NEVER MENTION HER. 


I'D BE A BUTTERFLY. 


Oh, no ! we never mention her ; 


I'd be a butterfly born in a bower. 


Her name is never heard ; 


Where roses and lilies and violets meet ; 


My lips are now forbid to speak 


Roving for ever from flower to flower, 


That once familiar word. 


Kissing all buds that are pretty and sweet. 


From sport to sport they hurry me. 


I'd never languish for wealth or for power, 


To banish my regret ; 


I 'd never sigh to see slaves at my feet ; 


And when they win a smile from me, 


I'd be a butterfly born in a bower. 


They think that I forget. 


Kissing all buds that are pretty and sweet. 


They bid me seek in change of scene 


Oh ! could I pilfer the wand of a fairy, 


The charms that others see ; 


I 'd have a pair of those beautiful wings. 


But were I in a foreign land, 


Their summer day's ramble is sportive and airy. 


They 'd find no change in me. 


They sleep in a rose when the nightingale sings. 


'T is true that I behold no more 


Those who have wealth must be watchful and wary, 


The valley where we met ; 


Power, alas ! naught but misery brings ; 


I do not see the hawthorn tree — 


I'd be a butterfly, sportive and airy. 


But how can I forget ! 


Rock'd in a rose when the nightingale sings. 


They tell me she is happy now — 


What though you tell me each gay little rover 


The gayest of the gay ; 


Shrinks from the breath of the first autumn day ; 


They hint that she forgets me now, 


Surely 'tis better, when summer is over, 


But heed not what they say ; 


To die, when all fair things are fading away. 


Like me perhaps she struggles with 


Some in life's winter may toil to discover 


Each feeling of regret ; 


Means of procuring a weary delay : 


But if she loves, as I have loved. 


I'd be a butterfly, living a rover, 


She never can forget. 

* 


Dying when fair things are fading away. 



GEORGE CROLY. 



The Rev. George Croly was horn in Ire- 
land, I believe in 178G, and vv^as educated at 
Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated 
with a high reputation for abilities and scho- 
larship. Soon after receiving the degree of 
Master of Arts, he entered holy orders and was 
appointed rector of a parish in the diocess of 
Meath. He remained here until the com- 
mencement of the war in Spain, when he 
went to London with a view to visit the Pen- 
insula. The peace of 1815, hov^^ever, induced 
a chanije of his intentions, and he directed his 
course through Germany to Paris, where he 
wrote the larger portion of his first considera- 
ble work, Paris in 1815, which was published 
on his return to England, and received with 
unusual applause, though its appearance was 
in the most brilliant period of modern English 
literature, the period in which Byron, Shelley, 
and the other great poets of the century, were 
in turn enchaining the admiration of mankind. 
He subsequently wrote a second part to this 
poem, and The Angel of the World. Catiline, 
a Tragedy, Sebastian a Spanish Tale, and 
numerous fugitive pieces, which were pub- 
lished collectively by Colburn in 1830. 

The Angel of the World is founded on one 
of the fictions of the Koran. It is one of the 
most carefully finished of Croly's poems, and 
is given, without abridgment, in this volume. 
Sebastian is a fine romantic sketch, but in 
execution is unequal to his other works. I do 
not know whether Catiline has ever been pre- 
sented on the stage ; probably it has not, 
though it seems to me better fitted for repre- 
sentation than many very successful pieces. 

The conspirator had, according to Cicero, 
"a multitude, not perhaps so much of virtues, 
as of approaches to virtues. He was the most 
extraordinary contradiction on earth ; a com- 
pound of all opposite qualities. Who could 
stand higher with honourable men at onetime? 
or, at another, wlio was more implicated with 
the worst! He had a wonderful power of 
bending individuals to his interests; no man 
could exhibit more zeal ; none be more liberal 
of his public credit, his purse, and, when 
darker occasions called for it, his whole inven- 



tion in evil. Austere with the rigid, gay with 
the gay, grave with the grave, ardent with 
the young, bold with the bold, and sumptuous 
with the prodigal : by this singular flexibility 
and variety of powers he collected around him 
men of all descriptions, the daring and disso- 
lute, and, at the same time, many of the manly 
and estimable." Croly follows Cicero in 
this estimate of his hero, and thus avoids a 
resemblance to Jonson, Crebillon, Voltaire, 
and other poets who have made the Cati- 
linian conspiracy the subject of tragedies, 
and adopted the sketch by Sallust. What- 
ever may be the merits of Catiline as a play, 
it is an admirable poem, and would alone have 
entitled its author to a high rank among his 
contemporaries. 

Croly has a remarkable splendour of lan- 
guage; he is stately, dignified, and affluent 
in imagery ; but sometimes, from condensa- 
tion and inversions, obscure ; and he is defi- 
cient in simplicity and tenderness, which is 
doubtless the principal reason why his works 
are so little read. 

He is not less distinguished as a prose writer 
than as a poet. His Salathiel, a Story of the 
Past, the Present, and the Future, has hardly 
been surpassed in energy, pathos, or dramatic 
interest, by any romance of the time ; and his 
Tales of the Great St. Bernard were nearly as 
attractive and popular. Besides these, he has 
published a Life of George the Fourth, The 
Year of Liberation, The Providence of God in 
the Latter Days, being a New Interpretation 
of the Apocalypse of St. .Tohn, Speeches, and 
other works in theology, in criticism, and in 
history, which are in their respective depart- 
ments original, powerful, and peculiar. 

Dr. Croly has been actively engaged in the 
discharge of his professional duties most of 
the time since his return from the Continent. 
When Lord Brougham was made chancellor 
he presented him one of the livings in the gift 
of the crown, and, in 1835, Lord Lvndhurst 
gave him the rectory of St. Stephens, London, 
in which he still remains. Tiie degree of 
Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by 
Trinity College, Dublin. 

2d2 317 



318 



GEORGE CROLY. 



THE ANGEL OF THE WORLD. 

There's glory on thy mountains, proud Bengal, 
When on their temples hursts the morning sun ! 
There's glory on thy marhle-tower'd wall, 
Proud Ispahan, beneath his burning noon ! 
There's glory — when his orolden course is done. 
Proud Istamboul, upon thy waters blue ! 
But fall'n Damascus, thine was beauty's throne, 
In morn, and noon, and evening's purple dew, 
Of all from Ocean's marge to mighty Himmalu. 

East of the city stands a lofty mount, 
Its brow with lightning delved and rent in sunder ; 
And through the fragments rolls a little fount. 
Whose channel bears the blast of fire and thunder ; 
And there has many a pilgrim come to wonder ; 
For there are flowers unnumber'd blossoming, 
With but the bare and calcined marble under; 
Yet in all Asia no such colours spring, 
No perfumes rich as in that mountain's rocky ring. 

And some who pray'd the night out on the hill. 
Have said they heard — unless it was their dream. 
Or the mere murmur of the babbling rill, — 
Just as the morn-star shot its first slant beam, 
A sound of music, such as they might deem 
The song of spirits — that would sometimes sail 
Close to their ear, a deep, delicious stream. 
Then sweep away, and die with a low wail ; 
Then come again, and thus, till Lucifer was pale. 

And some, but bolder still, had dared to turn 
That soil of mystery for hidden gold ; 
But saw strange, stifling blazes round them burn, 
And died : — by few that venturous tale was told. 
And wealth was found ; yet, as the pilgrims hold. 
Though it was glorious on the mountain's brow, 
Brought to the plain it crumbled into mould. 
The diamonds melted in the hand like snow ; 
So none molest that spot for gems or ingots now. 

But one, and ever after, round the hill 
He stray'd : — they said a meteor scorch'd his sight; 
Blind, mad, a warning of Heaven's fearful will. 
'Twas on the sacred evening of " The Flight," 
His spade turn'd up a shaft of marble white, 
Fragment of some kiosk, the chapiter 
A crystal circle, but at morn's first light 
Rich forms began within it to appear. 
Sceptred and wing'd, and then, it sank in water clear. 

Yet once upon that guarded mount, no foot 
But of the Moslem true might press a flower, 
And of them none, but with some solemn suit 
Beyond man's help, might venture near the bower: 
For, in its shade, in beauty and in power, 
For judgment sat the Angel of the World : 
Sent by the prophet, till the destined hour 
That saw in dust Arabia's idols hurl'd, 
Then to the skies again his wing should be unfurl'd. 

It came at last. It came with trumpets' sounding. 
It came with thunders of the atabal. 
And warrior shouts, and Arab chargers' bounding, 
The Sacred Standard crown'd Medina's wall ! 
From palace roof, and minaret's golden ball, 



Ten thousand emerald banners floated free, 
Beneath, like sunbeams, through the gateway tall, 
The emirs led their steel-mail'd chivalry. 
And the whole city rang vtith sports and soldier glee. 

This was the eve of eves, the end of war, 
Beginning of Dominion, first of Time ! 
When, swifter than the shooting of a star, 
Moliammed saw the '• Vision's" pomp sublime ; 
Swept o'er the rainbow'd sea — the fiery clime. 
Heard from the throne its will in thunders roll'd ; 
Then glancing on our world of wo and crime. 
Saw from Arabia's sands his banner's fold 
Wave o'er the brighten'd globe its sacred, conquer- 
ing gold. 

The sun was slowly sinking to the west, 
Pavilion'd witii a thousand glorious dyes ; 
The turtle-do\es were winging to the nest 
Along the mountain's soft declivities ; 
The fresher breath of flowers began to rise, 
Like incense, to that sweet departing sun ; 
Faint as the hum of bees the city's cries : 
A moment, and the lingering dink was gone ; 
Then were the angel's task on earth's dimorbit done. 

Oft had he gazed upon that lovely vale, 
But never gazed with gladness such as now ; 
When on Damascus' roofs and turrets pale 
He saw the solemn sunlight's iainter glow, 
With joy he heard the Imauns" voices flow 
Like breath of silver trumpets on the air; 
The vintagers' sweet song, the camels' low, 
As home they stalk'd from pasture, pair by pair, 
Flinging their shadows tall in the steep sunset glare. 

Then at his sceptre's wave, a rush of plumes 
Shook the thick dew-drops from the roses' dyes ; 
And, as imbodying of their waked perfumes, 
A crowd of lovely forms, with lightning eyes, 
And flower-crown'd hair, and cheeks of Paradise, 
Circled the bower of beauty on the wing: 
And all the grove was rich with symphonies 
Of seeming flute, and horn, and golden string, 
Thatslowly rose, and o'er the Mount hung hovering. 

The angel's flashing eyes were on the vault. 
That now with lamps of diamond all was hung; 
His mighty wings like tissues heavenly-wrought. 
Upon the bosom of the air were hung. 
The solemn hymn's last harmonies were sung. 
The sun was couching on the distant zone ; 
"Farewell" was breathing on the angel's tongue; — 
He glanced below. There stood a suppliant one ! 
The impatient angel sank, in wrath, upon his throne. 

Yet all was quickly sooth'd, — " this labour past, 
" His coronet of tenfold light was won." 
His glance again upon the form was cast. 
That now seem'd dying on the dazzling stone ; 
He bade it rise and speak. The solemn tone 
Of earth's high Sovereign mingled joy v.ifh fear, 
As summer vales of rose by lightning shown ; 
As the night-fountain in the desert drear ; [ear. 
His voice seem'd sudden life to that fall'n suppliant's 

The form arose — the face was in. a veil, 

The voice was low, and often check'd with sighs ; 



GEORGE CROLY. 



319 



The tale it utter'd was a simple tale ; 
" A vow to close a dying parent's eyes 
Had brought its weary steps from Tripolis ; 
The Arab in the Syrian mountains lay, 
The caravan was made the robber's prize, 
The pilgrim's little" wealth w;is swept away, 
Man's help was vain." Here sank the voice in 
soft decay. 

" And this is earth !" the angel frowning said ; 
And from the ground he took a matchless gem, 
And flung it to the mourner, then outspread 
His pinions, like the lightning's rushing beam. 
The pilgrim started at the diamond's gleam, 
Glanced up in pray 'r, then, bending near the throne, 
Shed the quick tears that from the bosom stream. 
And tried to speak, but tears were there alone ; 
The pitying angel said, " Be happy and begone." 

The weeper raised the veil ; a ruby lip 

First dawn'd : then glow'd the young cheek's 

deei)er hue. 
Yet delicate as roses when they dip 
Their odorous blossoms in the morning dew. 
Then beam'd the eyes, twin stars of living blue; 
Half-shaded by the curls of glossy hair, 
That turn'd to golden as the light wind threw 
Their dusters in the western golden glare. 
Yet was her blue eye dim, for tears were standing 

there. 

He look'd upon her, and her hurried gaze 
Sought from his glance sweet refuge on the ground; 
But o'er her cheek of beauty rush'd a blaze; 
And, as the soul had felt some sudden wound. 
Her bosom heaved above its silken bound. 
He look'd again ; the cheek was deadly pale ; 
The bosom sank with one long sigh profound ; 
Yet still one lily hand upheld her veil, [its tale. 
And still one press'd her heart — that sigh told all 

She stoop'd, and from the thicket pluck'd a flower. 

And fondly kiss'd, and then with feeble hand 

She laid it on the footstool of tiie bower ; 

Such was the ancient custom of the land. 

Her sighs were richer than the rose they fann'd ; 

The breezes swept it to the angel's feet; 

Yet even that sweet slight boon, 'twas Heaven's 
command, 

He must not touch, from her though doubly sweet, 
No earthly gift must stain that hallo w'd judgment- 
seat. 

Still lay the flower upon the splendid spot, 
The pilgrim turn'd away, as smote with shame ; 
Her eye a glance of self-upbraiding shot ; 
'Twas in his soul, a shaft of living flame. 
Then bow'd the humbled one, and bless'd his name, 
Cross'd her white arms, and slowly bade farewell. 
A sudden faintncss o'er the angel came ; 
The voice rose sweet and solemn as a spell, [veil. 
She bow'd her face to earth, and o'er it dropp'd her 

Beauty, what art thou, that thy slightest gaze 
Can make the spirit from its centre roll ; 
Its whole long course, a sad and shadowy maze 7 
Thou midnight or thou noontide of the soul; 
One glorious vision lightning up the whole 



Of the wide world ; or one deep, wild desire, 
By day and night consuming, sad and sole ; 
Till Hope, Pride, Genius, nay, till Love's own fire, 
Desert the weary heart, a cold and mouldering pyre. 

Enchanted sleep, yet full of deadly dreams ; 
Companionship divine, stern solitude ; 
'J'hou serpent, colour'd with the brightest gleams 
That e'er hid poison, making hearts thy food ; 
Wo to the heart that lets thee once intrude, 
Victim of visions that life's purpose steal, 
Till the whole struggling nature lies subdued, 
Bleeding with wounds the grave alone must heal. 
Proud angel, was it thine that mortal wo to feel] 

Still knelt the pilgrim cover'd with her veil, 
But all her bt^auty living on his eye ; 
Still hyacinth the clustering ringlets fell 
Wreathing her forehead's polish'd ivory ; 
Her cheek unseen still wore the rose-bud's dye; 
She sigh'd ; he heard the sigh beside him swell, 
He glanced around — no Spirit hover'd nigh — 
Touch'd the fall'n flower, and blushing, sigh'd 
" farewell." [der-peal. 

What sound has stunn'd his ear 1 A sudden thun- 

He look'd on heaven, 'twas calm, but in the vale 
A creeping mist had girt the mountain round, 
Making the golden minarets glimmer pale; 
It scaled the mount, — the feeble day was drown'd. 
The sky was with its livid hue embrown'd. 
But soon the vapours grew a circling sea. 
Reflecting lovely from its blue profound 
Mountain, and crimson cloud, and blossom'd tree; 
Another heaven and earth in bright tranquillity. 

And on its bosom swam a small chaloupe, 
That like a wild swan sported on the tide. 
The silken sail that canopied its poop 
Show'd one that look'd an houri in her pride ; 
Anon came spurring up the mountain's side 
A warrior Moslem all in glittering mail. 
That to his country's doubtful battle hied. 
He saw the form, he heard the tempter's tale, 
And answer'd with hisown: for beauty will prevail. 

But now in storm uprose the vast mirage ; 
Where sits she now who tempted him to roam ? 
How shall the skifl'with that wild sea engage ! 
In vain the quivering helm is turn'd to home. 
Dark'ning above the piles of tumbling foam. 
Rushes a shape of wo, and through the roar 
Peals in the warrior's ear a voice of doom. 
Down plunges (he chaloupe. — The storm is o'er : 
Heavy and slow the corpse rolls onward to the shore. 

The angel's heart was smote — but that touch'd 
flower, [sweet. 

Now opening, breathed such fragrance subtly 
He felt it strangely chain him to the bower. 
He dared not then that pilgrim's eye to meet, 
But gazed upon the small unsandal'd feet 
Shining like silver on the floor of rose ; [net 

At length he raised his glance ; — the veil's light 
Had floated backward from her pencil'd brows. 
Her eye was fix'd on Heaven, in sad, sublime repose. 



320 



GEORGE CROLY. 



A simple Syrian lyre was on her breast, 
And on her crimson lip was murmuring 
A village strain, that in the day's sweet rest 
Is heard in Araby round many a spring, 
When down the twilight vales the maidens bring 
The flocks to some old patriarchal well ; 
Or where beneath the palms some desert-king 
Lies, with his tribe around him as they fell ! 
The thunder burst again ; a long, deep, crashing 
peal. 

The angel heard it not; as round the range 
Of the blue hill-tops roar'd the volley on, 
Uttering its voice with wild, aerial change ; 
Now sinking in a deep and distant moan, 
Like the last echo of a host o'erthrown ; 
Then rushing with new vengeance down again, 
Shooting the fiery flash and thunder-stone ; 
Till flamed, like funeral pyres, the mountain chain. 
The angel heard it not ; its wisdom all was vain. 

He heard not even the strain, though it had 

changed 
From the calm sweetness of the holy hymn. 
His thoughts from depth to depth unconscious 

ranged, 
Yet all within was dizzy, strange, and dim ; 
A mist seem'd spreading between heaven and him; 
He sat absorb'd in dreams ; — a searching tone 
Came on his ear, oh how her dark eyes swim 
Who breathed that echo of a heart undone, 
The song of early joys, delicious, dear, and gone ! 

Again it changed. — But, now 'twas wild and 
grand, [trol. 

The praise of hearts that scorn the world's con- 
Disdaining all but love's delicious band, 
The chain of gold and flowers, the tie of soul. 
Again strange paleness o'er her beauty stole. 
She glanced above, then stoop'd her glowing eye, 
Blue as the star that glitter'd by the pole ; 
One tear-drop gleam'd, she dash'd it quickly by. 
And dropp'd the lyre, and turn'd — as if sheturn'd 
to die. 

The night-breeze from the mountains had begun ; 
And as it wing'd among the clouds of even. 
Where, like a routed king, the Sultan Sun 
Still struggled on the fiery verge of heaven ; 
Their volumes in ten thousand shapes were driven; 
Spreading away in boundless palace halls. 
Whose lights from gold and emerald lamps were 

given ; 
Or airy citadels and battled walls ; 
Or sunk in valleys sweet, with silver waterfalls. 

But, for those sights of heaven the angel's heart 
Was all unsettled: and a bitter sigh 
Burst from his burning lip, and with a start 
He cast upon the earth his conscious eve. 
The whole horizon from that sunmiit high 
Spread out in vision, from tlie pallid line 

'Where old Palmyra's pomps in ruin lie, 
Gilding the Arab sands, to where supine 

The western lustre tinged thy spires, lost Palestine ! 

Yet, loveliest of the vision was the vale 

That sloped beneath his own imperial bowers ; 



Sheeted with colours like an Indian mail, 
A tapestry sweet of all sun-painted flowers. 
Balsam, and clove, and jasmines scented showers, 
And the red glory of the Persian rose. 
Spreading in league on league around the towers, 
Where, loved of Heaven, and hated of its foes. 
The queen of cities shines, in calm and proud repose. 

And still he gazed — and saw not that the eve 
Was fading into night. A sudden thought 
Struck to his dreaming heart, that made it heave ; 
Was he not there in Paradise 1 — that spot, 
Was it not lovely as the lofty vault 
That rose above him 1 In his native skies, 
Could he be happy till his soul forgot, 
Oh ! how forget, the being whom his eyes 
Loved as their light of light .' He heard a tempest 
rise — 

Was it a dream ] the vale at once was bare, 
And o'er it hung a broad and sulphurous cloud : 
The soil grew red and rifted with its glare ; 
Down to their roots the mountain cedars bow'd ; 
Along the ground a rapid vapour flow'd, 
\ ellow and pale, thick seam'd with streaks of flame. 
Before it sprang the vulture from the shroud ; 
The lion bounded from it scared and tame ; 
Behind it, darkening heaven, the mighty whirl- 
wind came. 

Like a long tulip bed. across the plain 
A caravan approach'd the evening well, 
A long, deep mass of turban, plume, and vane ; 
And lovely came its distant, solemn swell 
Of song, and pilgrim-horn, and camel-bell. 
The sandy ocean rose before their eye, 
In thunder on their bending host it fell 
Ten thousand lips sent up one fearful cry ; [lie. 
The sound vs'as still'd at once, beneath its wave they 

But, two escaped, that up the mountain sprung, 
And those the dead men's treasure downwards 

drew ; 
One, with slow steps; but beautiful and young 
Was she,whoround hisneck herwhite arms threw. 
Away the tomb of sand like vapour flew. 
There, naked lay the costly caravan, 
A league of piles of silk and gems that threw 
A rainbow light, and mid them stiff' and wan, 
Stretch'd by his camel's flank, their transient master, 

man. 

The statelier wanderer from the height was won, 
And cap and sash soon gleam'd with plunder'd 

gold. 
But, now the desert rose, in pillars dun. 
Glowing with fire like iron in the mould, [roll'd ; 
That wings with fiery speed, recoil'd, sprang. 
Before them waned the moon's ascending phase. 
The clouds above them shrank the reddening fold : 
On rush'd the giant columns blaze on blaze, 
The sacrilegious died, wrapp'd in the burning haze. 

The angel sat enthroned within a dome 
Of alabaster raised on pillars slight, 
Curtain'd with tissues of no earthly loom; 
For spirits wove the web of blossoms bright. 
Woof of all flowers that drink the morning light, 



GEORGE CROLY. 



321 



And with their beauty figured all the stone 
In characters of mystery and misht, 
A more than mortal guard around the throne, 
That in their tender shade one glorious diamond 
shone. 

And every bud round pedestal and plinth, 
As fell the evening, turn'd a living gem. 
Lighted its purple lamp the hyacinth. 
The dahlia j)our'd its thousand-colour'd gleam, 
A ruliy torch the wondering eye might deem 
Hung on the brow of some night-watching tower, 
Where upwards climb'd the broad magnolia's stem. 
An urn of lovely lustre every flower. 
Burning before the king of that illumined bower. 

And nestling in that arbour's leafy twine, 
From cedar's top to violet's lowly bell. 
Were birds, now hush'd, of plumage all divine, 
That, as the quivering radiance on them fell, 
Shot back such hues as stain the orient shell. 
Touching the deep, green shades with light from 

eyes 
Jacinth, and jet, and blazing carbuncle, 
And gold-dropt coronets, and wings of dyes 
Bathed in the living streams of their own Paradise. 

The angel knew the warning of that storm ; 
But saw the shuddering minstrel's step draw near. 
And felt the whole deep witchery of her form ; 
Her sigh was music's echo to his ear ; 
He loved — and what has love to do with fear ] 
Now night had dronp'd on earth her raven wing, 
But in the arbour all was splendour clear; 
And, like twin spirits in its charmed ring, 

Shone that sweet child of earth and that star- 
diadem' J king. 
For, whether 'twas the light's unusual glow. 
Or that some dazzling change had on her come; 
Her look, though lovely still, was loftier now, 
Her tender cheek was flush'd with brighter bloom ; 
Yet in her azure eyebeam gather 'd gloom, 
Like evening's clouds across its own blue star, 
Then would a sudden flash its depths illume ; 
And wore she but the wing and gemm'd tiar, 

She seem'd instinct with might to make the clouds 
her car. 
She slowly raised her arm, that, bright as snow, 
Gleam'd like a rising meteor through the air. 
Shedding white lustre on her turban'd brow ; 
And gazed on heaven, as wrapt in solemn prayer ; 
She still look'd woman, yet more proudly fair; 
And as she stood and pointed to the sky. 
With that fix'd look of loveliness and care. 
The imgel thought, and check'd it with a sigh, 

He saw some spirit fallen from immortality. 

The silent prayer was done ; and now she moved 
Faint to his footstool, and, upon her knee. 
Besought her lord, if in his heaven they loved, 
That, as she never more his face must see. 
She there might pledge her heart's fidelity. 
Then turn'd, and pluck'd a cluster from the vine, 
And o'er a chalice waved it, with a sigh. 
Then stoop'd the crystal cup before the shrine. 
In wrath the angel rose — the guilty draught was 
wine ! 

41 



She stood ; she shrank ; she totter'd. Down he 

sprang, 
Clasp'd with one hand her waist, with one upheld 
The vase — his ears with giddy murmurs rang; 
His eye upon her dying cheek was spell'd ; 
Up to the brim the draught of evil swell'd 
Like liquid rose, its odour touch'd his brain ; 
He knew his ruin, but his soul was quell'd ; 
He shudder'd — gazed upon her cheek again, 
Press'd her pale lip, and to the last that cup did drain. 

The enchantress smiled, as still in some sweet 

dream. 
Then waken'd in a long, delicious sigh. 
And on the bending spirit fix'd the beam 
Of her deep, dewy, melancholy eye. 
The undone angel gave no more reply 
Than hiding his pale forehead in the hair 
That floated on her neck of ivory. 
And breathless pressing, with her ringlets fair. 
From his bright eyes the tearsof passion and despair. 

The heaven was one blue cope, inlaid with gems 
Thick as the concave of a diamond mine. 
But from the north now fly pale, phosphor beams 
That o'er the mount their quivering net entwine ; 
The smallest stars through that sweet lustre shine; 
Then, like a routed host, its streamers fly : 
Then, from the moony horizontal line 
A surge of sudden glory floods the sky. 
Ocean of purple waves, and melted lazuli. 

But wilder wonder smote their shrinking eyes: 
A vapour plunged upon the vale from heaven. 
Then, darkly gathering, tower'd of mountain size; 
From its high crater coiumn'd smokes were driven; 
It heaved within, as if pent flames had striven 
With mighty winds to burst their prison hold, 
Till all the cloud-volcano's bulk was riven 
Math angry light, that seem'd in cataracts roU'd, 
Silver, a!id sanguine steel, and streams of molten 
gold. 

Then echoed on the winds a hollow roar, 
An earthquake groan, that told convulsion near: 
Out rush'd the burden of its burning core. 
Myriads of fiery globes, as day-light clear. 
The sky was fill'd with flashing sphere on sphere, 
Shooting straight ujiward to the zenith's crown. 
The stars were blasted in that splendour drear, 
The land beneath in wild distinctness shone. 
From Syria's yellow sands to Libanus' summit- 
stone. 

The storm is on the embattled clouds receding, 
The purple streamers wander pale and thin, 
But o'er the pole a fiercer flame is spreading, 
Wheel within wheel of fire, and fiir within 
Revolves a stooping splendour crystalline. 
A throne ; — but who the sitter on that throne ! 
The angel knew the punishcr of sin ; 
Check'd on his lip the self-upbraiding groan. 
And clasp'd his dying love, and joy 'd to be undone. 

And once, 'twas but a moment, on her cheek 
He gave a glance, then sank his hurried eye, 
And press'd it closer on her dazzling neck. 



323 



GEORGE CROLY. 



Yet, even in that swift gaze, he could espy 
A look that made his heart's blood backwards fly. 
Was it a dream ] there echoed in his ear 
A stinging tone — a laugh of mockery I 
It was a dream — it must be. Oh ! that fear. 
When the heart longs to know, what it is death to 
hear. 

He glanced again — her eye was upward still, 
Fix'd on the stooping of that burning car; 
But through his liosom shot an arrowy thrill, 
To see its solemn, stern, uneailhly slare ; 
She stood a statue of sublime despair, 
But on her lip sat scorn. — His spirit froze, — 
His footstep reel'd, — his wan lip gasp'd for air; 
She felt his throb, — and o'er him stoop'd with 
brows 
As evening sweet, and kiss'd him with a lip of rose. 

Again s!ie was all beauty, and they stood 
•Still fonder clasp'd, and gazing with the eye 
Of famine gazing on the poison'd food 
That it must feed on, or abstaining die. 
There was between them now nor tear nor sigh ; 
Theirs was the deep communion of the soul ; 
Passion's absorlnng, bitter luxury ; 
What was to them or heaven or earth, the whole 
Was in that fatal spot, where they stood sad, and 
sole. 

The minstrel first shook off the silent trance ; 
And in a voice sweet as the murmuring 
Of summer streams beneath the moon light's glance, 
Besought the desperate one to spread the wing 
Beyond the power of his vindictive king. 
Slave to her slightest word, he raised his plume. 
For life or death, he reck'd not which, to spring; 
Nay, to confront the thunder and the gloom. 
She wildly kiss'd his hand, and sank, as in a tomb. 

The angel sooth'd her, " No ! let justice wreak 
Its wrath upon them both, or him alone." 
A flush of love's pure crimson lit her cheek ; 
She whisper'd, and his stoop'd ear drank the tone 
Vv'ilh mad delight: "0 there is one way, one, 
To save us both. Are there not mighty words, 
Graved on the magnet-throne where Solomon 
Sits ever guarded by the genii swords, [Lord's ?" 
To give thy servant wings, like her resplendent 

This was the sin of sins ! The first, last crime, 
In earth and heaven, unnamed, unnameable ; 
This from his throne of light, before all time, 
Had smitten Eblis, brightest, first that fell. 
He started back. — " What urged him to rebel 1 
What led that soft seducer to his bower"! 
Could she have laid upon his soul that spell, 
Young, lovely, fond; yet but an earthly flower]" — 
Bat for that fatal cup, he had been free that hour. 

But still its draught was fever in his blood. 
He caught the upward, humble, weeping gleam 
Of woman's eye, by passion all subdued; 
He sigh'd, and at his sigh he saw it beam : 
Oh ! the sweet frenzy of the lover's dream ! 
A moment's lingering, and they both must die. 
The lightning round them shot a broader stream ; 
He felt her clasp his feet in agony ; [reply ! 

He^poke the "Words of might," — ^the thunder gave 



Away ! away ! the sky is one black cloud, 
Shooting its lightnings down in spire on spire. 
Around the mount its canopy is bow'd, 
A fiery vault upraised on pillard fire ; 
The stars like lamps along its roof expire ; 
But through its centre bursts an orb of rays; 
The angel knew the Avenger in his ire ! 
The hill-top smoked beneath the stooping blaze, 
The culprits dared not there their guilty glancesraise. 

And words were utter'd from that whirling sphere, 
That mortal sense might never hear and live. 
They pierced like arrows through the angel's ear ; 
He bow'd his head ; 'twas vain to fly or strive. 
Down comes the final wrath : the thunders give 
The doubled peal, — the rains in cataracts sweep, 
Broad bars of fire the sheeted deluge rive; 
The mountain summits to the valley leap. 
Pavilion, garden, grove, smoke up one ruin'd heap. 

The storm stands still ! a moment's pause of terror! 
All dungeon-dark ! — Again the lightnings yawn. 
Showing the earth as in a quivering mirror. 
The prostrate angel felt but that the one. 
Whose love had lost him Paradise, was gone : 
He dared not see her corpse ! — he closed his eyes ; 
A voice burst o'er him, solemn as the tone 
Of the last trump, — he glanced upon the skies, 
He saw, what shook his soul with terror, shame, 
surprise. 

The minstrel stood before him ; two broad plumes 
Spread from her shoulders on the burden'd air ; 
Her face was glorious still, but love's young blooms 
Had vanish'd for the hue of bold despair; 
A fierj' circle crown'd her sable hair ; 
And, as she look'd upon her prostrate prize, 
Her eyeballs shot around a meteor glare. 
Her form tower'd up at once to giant size ; 
'Twas Eblis ! king of Hell's relentless sovereign- 
ties. 

The tempter spoke — " Spirit, thou mightst have 

stood. 
But thou hast fallen a weak and willing slave. 
Now were thy feeble heart our serpents' food, 
Thy bed our burning ocean's sleepless wave, 
But haughty Heaven controls the power it gave. 
Yet art thou doom'd to wander from thy sphere, 
Till the hist trumpet reaches to the grave; 
Till the sun rolls the grand concluding year ; 
Till earth is Paradise ; then shall thy crime be 

clear. 

The angel listen'd, risen upon one knee, 
Resolved to hear the deadliest undismay'd. 
His star-dropt plume hung round him droopingly, 
His brow, like marble, on his hand was stay'd. 
Still through the auburn locks' o'erhanging shade 
His face shone beautiful ; he heard his ban ; 
Then came the words of mercy, sternly said ; 
He plunged within his hands his visage wan. 
And the first wild, sweet tears from his heart- 
pulses ran. 

The giant grasp'd him as he fell to earth, 
And his black vanes upon the air were flung, 
A tabernacle dark ; — and shouts of mirth 



GEORGE CROLY. 



323 



Mingled with shriekings through the tempest 

swung ; 
His arm around the fainting angel clung. 
Then on the clouds he darted with a groan ; 
A moment o'er the mount of ruin hung, [cone, 
Then hurst through space, like the red comet's 
Leaving his track on heaven a burning, endless zone. 



A SCENE FROM CATILINE. 

Caliline. Flunr on my pillow ! does the last 
night's wine 
Perplex me still ] Its words are wild and bold. 

(Reads) " Noble Catiline I where you tread, the earth 
is hollow, though it ff'ves no sound. There is a 
storm galheiirijr, though there are no clouds in the 
sky. Rome is desperate ; three hundred patricians 
hive sworn to do their duty; and what three hun- 
dred have sworn, thirty thousand will make good." 

Why, half the number now might sack the city, 
With all its knights, before a spear could come 
From Ostia to their succour. — 'Twere a deed ! — 

(Reads) "You have been betrayed by the senate, be- 
trayed by the consuls, and betrayed by the people. 
You are a Roman, can you suffer ch uns 1 You are 
a soldier, can you submit to shame? You are a 
man; will you be ruined, trampled on, disdained ?" 
(_Flings away the paper.) 

Disdained! They're in the right. — It tells the 
I am a scoff and shame — a public prate, [truth — 
There's one way left: {draws a poniard^ this dag- 
ger in my heart — 
The quickest cure ! . . But \\s, the coward's cure ; 
And what shall heal the dearer part of me, 
My reputation ? What shield's for my name, 
When I shall fling it, like ray corpse, to those 
Who dared not touch it living, for their lives ] 
So, there lies satisfaction ; and my veins 
Must weep — for nothing ! when my enemies 
Might be compell'd to buy them drop by drop. 
No ! by the Thunderer, they shall pay their price. 
To die ! in days when helms are burnishing ; 
When heaven and earth are ripening for a change; 
And die by my own hand ! — Give up the game 
Before the dice are thrown ! — Clamour for chains, 
Before the stirring trumpet sounds the charge ! — 
Bind up my limbs — a voluntary mark 
For the world's enginery, the ruffian gibe, 
The false friend's sneer, the spurn of the safe foe, 
The sickly, sour hypocrisy, that loves 
To find a wretch to make its moral of, 
Crushes the fallen, and calls it Charity ! — 
Sleep in your sheath ! [He puts up the poniard. 

How could my mind give place 
To thoughts so desperate, rash, and mutinous 1 
Fate governs all things. Madman! would I give 
Joy to my enemies, sorrow to my friends, — 
Shut up the gate of hope upon myself! 
My sword may thrive ! — Dreams, dreams ! my 

inind's as full 
Of vapourish fantasies sts a sick girl's ! 
I will abandon Rome, — give back her scorn 
With tenfold scorn: break up all league with her, — 
All memories. I will not breathe her air, * 



Nor warm me with her fire, nor let rny bones 
Mix with her sepulchres. The oath is sworn. 
[Aurelia enters witfi papers. 

AurcUa. What answers for this pile of bills, 
my lord ? 

Catiline. Who can have sent them here! 

Aurelia. Your creditors ! 
As if some demon woke them all at once. 
These have been crowding on me since the morn. 
Here, Caius Curtius claims the prompt discharge 
Of his half million sesterces ; besides 
The interest on your bond, ten thousand more. 
Six thousand for your Tyrian canopy; 
Here, for your Persian horses — your trireme: 
Here, debt on debt. Will you discharge them now? 

Catiline. I'll think on it. 

Aurelia. It must be now ; this day ! 
Or, by to-morrow, we shall have no home. 

Catiline. 'Twill soon be all the same. 

Aurelia. We are undone ! 
My gold, m}^ father's presents, jewels, rings, — 
All, to the baubles on my neck, are gone. 
The consulship might have upheld us still ; 
But noic, — we must go down. 

Catiline. Aurelia! — wife! 
All will be well : but hear me — .stay — a little; 
I had intended to consult with you — 
On — our departure — from — the — city. 

Aurelia, ind'gnantly and surprised. Rome] 

Catiline. Even so, fair wife I we must leave 
Rome. 

Aurelia. Let me look on you ; are you Catilinel 

Catiline. — I know not what I am — we must 
be gone I 

Aurelia. Madness! 

Catiline, wildly. Not yet — not yet ! 

Aurelia. Let them take all ! 

Catiline. The gods will have it so ! 

Aurelia. Seize on your house 1 

Catiline. Seize my last sesterce ! Let them 
have their will. 
We must endure. Ay, ransack — ruin all ; 
Tear up my father's grave, — tear out my heart. 
Wife ! the world's wide, — Can we not dig or beg? 
Can we not find on earth a den, or tombl 

Aurelia. Before I stir, they shall hew off my 
hands. 

Catiline. What's to be done 7 

Aurelia. Hear me. Lord Catiline: 
The day we wedded, — 'tis but three short 3'ears ! 
You were the first patrician here, — and I 
Was Marius' daughter ! There was not in Rome 
An eye, however haughty, but would sink 
When / turn'd on it: when I pass'd the streets 
My chariot wheel was follow'd by a host 
Of your chief senators ; as if their gaze 
Beheld an empress on its golden round ; 
An earthly providence ! 

Catiline. 'Twas so ! — 'twas so ! 
But it is vanish'd — gone. 

Aurelia. By yon bright sun ! 
That day shall coine again : or, in its place, 
One that shall be an era to the world ! 

Catiline, eagerly. Wiiat's in your thoughts 1 
Aurelia. Our high and hurried life 



324 



GEORGE CROLY. 



Has left us strangers to each other's souls : 
But now we think alike. You have a sword, — 
Have had a famous name i' the legions ! 
CallUne. Hush! 

Aiirelia. Have the walls ears? Great Jove! I 
wish they had ; 
And tongues too, to bear witness to my oath, 
And tell it to all Rome. 

Catiline. Would you destroy ] 
Aurelia. Were I a thunderbolt ! 

Rome's ship is rotten : 
Has she not cast you out; and would you sink 
With her. when she can give you no gain else 
Of her fierce fellowship? Who'd seek the chain 
That link'd him to his mortal enemy? 
Who'd face the pestilence in his foe's house? 
Who, when the poisoner drinks by chance the cup, 
That was to be his death, would squeeze the dregs 
To find a drop to bear him company? 

Catiline, shrinking. It will not come to this. 
Au>-elia, haughtily. Shall we be dragg'd, 
A show to all the city rabble ; — rohb'd, — 
Down to the very mantle on our backs, — 
A pair of branded beggars ! Doubtless Cicero — 
Caliline. Cursed be the ground he treads ! 

Name him no more. 
Aurelia. Doubtless //c'll sec us to the city gates; 
'Twill be the least respect that he can pay 
To his fallen rival. Do you hear, my lord ? 
Deaf as the rock (aside.^ With all his lictors 

shouting, 
" Room for the noble vagrants ; all caps ofT 
For Catiline! for him that would be consul." 
Catiline, turning awat/. Thus to be, like the 
scorpion, ring'd with fire, 
Till I sting mine own heart ! (^aside.) There is 
no hope ! 
Aurelia. One hope there is, worth all the rest — 
revenge ! 
The time is harass'd, poor, and discontent ; 
Your spirit practised, keen, and desperate, — 
The senate full of feuds, — the city vex'd 
With petty tyranny, — the legions wrong'd — 
Catiline, scorn f;i III/. Yet, who has stirr'd? 
Woman, you paint the air 
With passion's pencil. 

Aurelia. Were ray will a sword ! 
Catiline. Hear me, bold heart I The whole 
gross blood of Rome 
Could not atone my wrongs ! I'm soul-shrunk, sick, 
Weary of man! And now my mind is fix'd 
For Lybia : there to make companionship 
Rather of bear and tiger, — of the snake, — 
The lion in his hunger, — than of man ! 

Aurelia. I had a father once, who would have 
Rome in the Tiber for an angry look ! [plunged 
You saw our entrance from the Gaulish war, 
When Sylla fled ? 

Catiline. My legion was in Spain. 
Aurelia. We swept through Italy, a flood of 
A living lava, rolling straight on Rome. [fire, 

For days, before we reach'd it, the whole road 
Was throng'd with suppliants — tribunes, consulars, 
The mightiest names o' the state. Could gold have 
bribed, 



We might have pitched our tents and slept on gold. 
But we had work to do, — our swords were thirsty. 
We enter'd Rome, as conquerors, in arms ; 
I by my father's side, cuirass'd and helm'd, 
Bellona beside Mars. 

Catiline, with coldness. The world was yours. 

Aurelia. Rome was all eyes ; the ancient tot- 
ter'd forth ; 
The cripple propp'd his limbs beside the wall ; 
The dying left his bed to look and die. 
The way before us was a sea of heads ; 
The way behinii a torrent of brown spears: 
So, on we rode, in fierce and funeral pomp. 
Through the long, living streets, that sank in gloom, 
As we, like Pluto and Proserpina, 
Enthroned, rode on, like twofold destiny ! 

Catiline, sternly, interrupting her. Those tri- 
umphs are but gewgaws. Ail the earth 
What is it? Dust and smoke. I've done with life! 

Aurelia, coming closer, and looking steadily 
upon him. Before that eve — one hundred senators, 
And fifteen hundred knights, had paid — in blood, 
The price of taunts, and treachery, and rebellion ! 
Were my tongue thunder — I would cry. Revenge ! 

Catiline, in sudden wildness. No more of this ! 
In, to your chamber, wife ! 
There is a whirling lightness in my brain 
That will not now bear questioning. — Away ! 

[-4.^ Aurelia moves sloivly towards the door. 
Where are our veterans now ? Look on these 
I cannot turn their tissues into life. [walls ; 

Where are our revenues — our chosen friends? 
Are we not beggars? Where have beggars friends? 
/ see no swords and bucklers on these floors ! 
/ shake the state ! / — What have I on earth 
But these two hands? Must I not dig or starve? — 
Come back ! I had forgot. My memory dies, 
I think, by the hour. Who sups with us to-night? 
Let all be of the rarest, — spare no cost. — 
If 'tis our last; — it may be — let us sink 
In sumptuous ruin, with wonderers round us, wife! 
Our funeral pile shall send up amber smokes; 
We'll burn in myrrh, or — blood ! [She goes. 

I feel a nameless pressure on my brow. 
As if the heavens were thick with sudden gloom ; 
A shapeless consciousness, as if some blow 
Were hangingo'er my head. They say such thoughts 
Partake of jirophecy. [He stands at the casement. 
This air is living sweetness. Golden sun. 
Shall I be like thee yet? The clouds have past — 
And, like some mighty victor, he returns 
To his red city in the west, that now 
Spreads all her gates, and lights her torches up. 
In triumph for her glorious conqueror. 



ASTROLOGY. 

Look there ! the hour is written in the sky. 
Jove rushes down on Saturn, — 'tis the sign 
Of war throughout the nations. In the east 
The Crescent sickens ; — and the purple star, 
Perseus, the Ionian's love, lifts up his crest, 
And o'er her stands exulting ! 



GEORGE CROLY. 



325 



JACOB'S DREAM. 

FROM A PICTURE BY WASHINGTON ALLSTON, A. R. A. 

The sun was sinkins; on the mountain zone 
That guards thy vales of beauty, Palestine ! 
And lovely from the desert rose the moon, 
Yet linj^cring on the horizon's purple line, 
Like a pure spirit o'er its earthly shrine. 
Up PadiUiaram's heiijht abrupt and bare 
A pilt^riin toil'd, and oft on day's decline 
Look'd pale, then paused for eve's delicious air, 
The summit gain'd, he knelt, and breathed' his 
evening prayer. 

He spread his cloak and slumber'd — darkness fell 
Upon the twilight hills; a sudden sound 
Of silver trumpets o'er him seem'd to swell; 
Clouds heavy with the tempest gather'd round ; 
Yet was the whirlwind in its caverns bound ; 
Still deeper roll'd the darkness from on high, 
Gigantic volume upon volume wound ; 
Above, a pillar shooting to the sky, 
Below, a mighty sea, that spread incessantly. 

Voices are heard — a choir of golden strings, 
Low winds, whose breath is loaded with the rose ; 
Then chariot-wheels — the nearer rush of wings; 
Pale lightning round the dark pavilion glows. 
It thunders — the resplendent gates unclose ; 
Far as the eye can glance, on height o'er height, 
Rise fiery waving wings, and star-crown'd brows. 
Millions on millions, brighter and more bright, 
Till all is lost in one supreme, unmingled light. 

But, two beside the sleeping pilgrim stand. 
Like cherub kings, with lifted, mighty plume, 
Fix'd, sunbright eyes, and looks of high command : 
They tell the patriarch of his glorious doom ; 
Father of countless myriads that shall come. 
Sweeping the land like billows of the sea, 
Brightas thestars of heaven from twilight's gloom, 
Till He is given whom angels long to see, 
And Israel's splendid line is crown'd with Deity. 



AN AURORA BOREALIS. 

— Last night I could not rest: the chamber's heat, 
Or some wild thouglits — the folly of the day 
Banish'd my sleep : So, in the garden air, 
I gazed upon the comet, that then shone 
In midnight glory, dimming all the stars. 
At once a crimson blaze, that made it pale. 
Flooded the north. I turn'd, and saw in heaven 
Two mighty armies! From the zenith star, 
Down to the earth, legions in line and orb. 
Squadron and square, like earthly marshalry. 
Anon, as if a sudden trumpet spoke, 
Banners of gold and pur[)le were flung out; 
Fire-crested leaders swo|)t along the lines; 
And both the gorgeous depths, like meeting seas, 
Roird to wild battle. Then, they breathed awhile, 
Leaving the space between a sheet of gore, 
Strew'd with torn standards, corpses, and crash'd 
spears : 



But soon upon the horizon's belt uprose, 
Moon-like, or richer, — like the rising morn, 
A bulwark'd city. 

— Rome ? 

— Both armies joined. 

And like a deluge, rush'd against the walls 
Ona chieftain led both armies to the storm. 
Till the proud capitol in embers fell, 
And heaven was all on fire. 



REBELLION. 

I HAD a vision : evening sat in gold 
Upon the bosom of a boundless plain, 
Cover'd with beauty ; — garden, field, and fold. 
Studding the billowy sweep of ripening grain. 
Like islands in the purple summer main. 
And temples of pure marble met the sun, 
That tinged their white shafts with a golden stain ; 
And sounds of rustic joy, and labour done, 
Hallo w'd the lovely hour, until her pomp was gone. 

The plain was hush'd in twilight, as a child 
Slumbers beneath its slow drawn canop}' ; 
But sudden tramplings came, and voices wild, 
An<l tossings of rude weapons caught the eye; 
And on the hills, like meteors in the sky, 
Burst sanguine fires, and ever and anon 
To the clash'd spears the horn gave fierce reply ; 
And round their beacons trooping thousandsshone. 
Then sank, like evil things, and all was dark and 
lone. 

'Twas midnight; there was wrath in that wild 

heaven : 
Earth was sepulchral dark. At once a roar 
Peal'd round the mountain tops, like ocean driven 
Before the thunders on the eternal shore: 
Down rush'd, as if a sudden earthquake tore 
The bowels of the hills — a flood of fire: 
Like lava, mingled spears and torches pour. 
The plain is deluged, higher still and higher 
Swell blood and flame, till all is like one mighty pyre. 

'Twas dawn, and still the black and bloody smoke 
Roll'd o'er the champaign like a vault of stone: 
But as the sun's slow wheels the barrier broke. 
He lit the image of a fearful one. 
Throned in the central massacre, alone — 
An iron diadem upon his brow, 
A naked lance beside him, that yet shone 
Purple and warm with gore, and crouching low, 
All men in one huge chain, alike the friend and foe. 

The land around him, in that sickly light, 
Show'd like the upturning of a mighty grave ; 
Strewn with crush'd monuments, and remnants 

white 
Of man ; all loneliness, but when some slave 
With faint, fond hand the hurried burial gave, 
Then died. The desjjnt sat upon his throne, 
Scoffing to see the stubborn traitors wave 
At his least breath. 1'he good and brave were gone 
To exile or the tomb. Their country's life was done! 
2E 



326 



GEORGE CROLY. 



THE ALHAMBRA. 

Palace of beauty ! where the Moorish lord, 
King of the bow, the bridle, and the sword, 
Sat like a genie in the diamond's blaze. 
Oh ! to have seen thee in the ancient days, 
When at thy morning gates the coursers stood. 
The " thousand," milk-white, Yemen's fiery blood. 
In pearl and ruby harness'd for the king : 
And through thy portals pour'd the gorgeous flood 
Of jewell'd Sheik and emir, hastening, 
Before the sky the dawning purple show'd, 
Their turbans at the caliph's feet to fling. 
Lovely thy morn, — thy evening lovelier still 
When at the waking of the first blue star 
That trembled on the Atalaya hill, 
The splendours of the trumpet's voice arose, 
Brilliant and bold, and yet no sound of war ; 
But summoning thy beauty from repose, 
The shaded slumber of the burning noon. 
Then in the slant sun all thy fountains shone, 
Shooting the sparkling column from the vase 
Of crystal cool, and falling in a haze 
Of rainbow hues on floors of porphyry. 
And the rich bordering beds of every bloom 
That breathes to African or Indian sky. 
Carnation, tuberose, thick anemone ; 
Then was the harping of the minstrels heard. 
In the deep arbours, or the regal hall, 
Hushing the tumult of the festival. 
When the pale bard his kindling eyeball rear'd. 
And told of eastern glories, silken hosts, 
Tower'd elephants, and chiefs in topaz arm'd: 
Or of the myriads from the cloudy coasts 
Of the far western sea, the sons of blood, 
The iron men of tournament and feud, 
That round the bulwarks of their fathers swarm'd, 
Doom'd by the Moslem scimitar to fall ; 
Till the Red Cross was hurl'd from Salem's wall. 
Where are thy pomps, Alhambra, earthly sun 
That had no rival, and no second 1 — gone ! 
Thy glory down the arch of time has roU'd, 
Like the great day-star to the ocean dim. 
The billows of the ages o'er thee swim. 
Gloomy and fathomless ; thy tale is told. 
Where is thy horn of battle ! that but blown 
Brought every chief of Afric from his throne ; 
Brought every spear of Afric from the wall ; 
Brought everv charger barded from the stall, 
Till all its tribes sat mounted on the shore ; 
Waiting the waving of thy torch to pour 
The living deluge on the fields of Spain. 
Queen of earth's loveliness, there was a stain 
Upon thy brow — the stain of guilt and gore ; 
Thy course was bright, bold, treacherous, — and 'tis 
The spear and diadem are from thee gone ; [o'er. 
Silence is now sole monarch of thy throne ! 



A MEETING OF MAGICIANS. 

ly my own land, and hunting through the hills, 
I've sat from eve to sunrise, in the caves 
Of Atlas, circled by the altar-fires 
Of black enchanters, men who yearly came, 
By compact, to hold solemn festival : 
Some riding fiery dragons, some on shafts 
Of the sunn'd topaz, some on ostrich {)lumes, 
Or wondrous cars, that press'd the subtle air. 
No heavier than its clouds, — some in swift barks. 
That lit the Libyan Sea through night and storm, 
Like wing'd volcanoes ; from all zones of the earth. 
From the mysterious fountains of the Nile, 
Gold-sanded Niger, India's diamond shore, 
From silken China, — from the Spicy Isles, 
Like incense-urns set in the purple sea 
By Taprobane. 



A LOVER'S OATH. 

By this white hand, thus shook with such sweet 
By the deliciousness of this droop'd eye ; [fear; 
By the red witchery of this trembling lip; 
By all the charm of woman's weeping love. 



THE STARS. 

Ye stars ! bright legions that, before all time, 
Camp'd on yon plain of sapphire, what shall tell 
Your burning myriads, but the eye of Him 
Who bade through heaven your golden chariots 

wheel 7 
Yet who earthborn can sec your hosts, nor feel 
Immortal impulses — Eternity ! 
What v^'onder if the o'erwrought soul should reel 
With its own weight of thought, and the wild eye 
See fate within your tracts of sleepless glory lie 1 

For ye behold the mightiest. From that steep 
What ages have ye worshipp'd round your King ? 
Ye heard his trumpet sounded o'er the sleep 
Of earth ; — ye heard the morning angels sing. 
Upon that orb, now o'er me quivering. 
The gaze of Adam fix'd from Paradise ; 
The wanderers of the deluge saw it spring 
Above the mountain surge, and hail'd its rise 
Lightning their lonely track with hope's celestial 
dyes. 

On Calvary shot down that purple eye. 
When, but the soldier and the sacrifice, 
All were departed. — Mount of Agony ! 
But Time's broad pinion, ere the giant dies. 
Shall cloud your dome. — Ye fruitage of the skies, 
Your vineyard shall be shaken ! — From your urn 
Censers of Heaven ! no more shall glory rise. 
Your incense to the Throne I — The heavens shall 
burn : 
For all your pomps are dust, and shall to dust re- 
turn. 

Yet look, ye living intellects. — The trine 
Of waning planets speaks it not decay ] 
Does Schedir's staff of diamond wave no sign? 
Monarch of midnight, Sirius, shoots thy ray 
Undimm'd, when thrones sublunar pass away ? 
Dreams ! — yet if e'er was graved in vigil wan 
Your spell on gemkor imaged alchemy. 
The sign when empire's hour-glass downwards 
ran, 
'Twas on that arch, graved on that brazen talisman. 



GEORGE CROLY. 



327 



PERICLES AND ASPASIA. 

This was the ruler of the land, 

When Athens was the land of fame ; 

This was the light that led the hand, 
When each was like a living flame : 

The centre of earth's noblest ring, 

Of more than men, the more than king ! 

Yet, not by fetter, nor by spear ; 

His sovereignty was held or won ; 
Fear'd — but alone as freemen fear ; 

Loved — but as freemen love alone ! 
He waved the sceptre o'er his kind, 
15y nature's first great title — mind ! 

Resistless words were on his tongue ; 

Then eloquence first flash'd below ! 
Full arm'd to life the portent sprung, 

Minerva, from the 'i'hunderer's brow ! 
And his the sole, the sacred hand. 
That shook her Kgis o'er the land ! 

And throned immortal, by his side, 
A woman sits, witli eye sublime, — 

Aspasia, all his spirit's bride ; 

But if their solemn love were crime, — 

Pity the beauty and the sage, — 

Their crime was in their darken'd age. 

He perish'd — but his wreath was won — 
He perish'd on his height of fame ! 

Then sank the cloud on Alliens' sun ; 
Yet still she couquer'd in his name. 

Fill'd with his soul, she could not die— 

Her conquest was posterity ! 



LEONID AS. 

Sho'jt for the mighty men 
Who died along this shore, — 

Who died within this mountain glen ! 

For never nobler chieftain's head 

Was laid on valour's crimson bed, 
Nor ever prouder gore 

Sprang forth, than theirs who won the day 

Upon thy strand, Thermopylie ! 

Shout for the mighty men, 

Who on the Persian tents, 
Like lions from their midnight den. 
Bounding on the slumbering deer, 
Rush'd — a storm of sword and spear — 

Like the roused elements, 
Let loose from an immortal hand, 
To chasten or to crush a land ! 

But there are none to hear; 

Greece is a hopeless slave. 
Leonidas ! no hand is near 
To lift thy fiery falchion now : 
No warrior makes the warrior's vow 

Upon thy sea-wash'd grave. 
Tile voice tliat should be raised bv men, 
Must now be given by wave and glen. 



And it is given ! the surge — • 

The tree — the rock — the sand — 
On freedom's kneeling spirit urge. 
In sounds that speak but to the free. 
The memory of thine and thee ! 

The vision of thy band 
Still gleams within the glorious dell. 
Where their gore hallow'd, as it fell ! 

And is thy grandeur done? 

Mother of men like these ! 
Has not thy outcry gone 
Where justice has an ear to hearT 
Be holy ! God shall guide thy spear; 

Till in thy crimson'd seas 
Are plunged the chain and scimitar, 
Greece shall be a new-horn star ! 



A DIRGE. 

" EiTiTit to earth, and dust to dust!" 

Here the evil and the just. 

Here the youthful and the old, 

Here the fearful and the bold, 

Here the matron and the maid. 

In one silent bed are laid : 

Here the vassal and the king , 

Side by side lie withering ; 

Here the sword and sceptre rust — 

" Earth to earth, and dust to dust !" 

Age on age shall roll along. 
O'er this pale and mighty throng : 
Those that wept then, those that weep. 
All shall with these sleepers sleep. 
Brothers, sisters of the worm. 
Summer's sun, or winter's storm, 
Song of peace, or battle's roar, 
Ne'er shall break their slumbers more; 
Death shall keep his solemn trust — 
" Earth to earth, and dust to dust !" 

But a day is coming fast. 
Earth, thy mightiest and thy last; 
It shall come in fear and wonder. 
Heralded by trump and thunder ; 
It shall come in strife and toil. 
It shall come in blood and spoil, 
It shall come in empire's groans, 
Burning temples, trampled thrones; 
Then, ambition, rue thy lust I 
" Earth to earth, and dust to dust !" 

Then shall come the judgment sign; 
In the east the King shall shine ; 
Flashing from heaven's golden gate, 
Thousand thousands round his state ; 
Spirits with the crown and plume, 
Tremble then, thou sullen tomb ! 
Heaven shall oy)en on our siafht. 
Earth he turn'd to living light. 
Kingdoms of the ransom'd just — 
" Earth to earth, and dust to dust !" 



328 



GEORGE CROLY. 



Then shall, gorgeous as a gem, 
Shine thy mount, Jerusalem ; 
Then shall in the desert rise 
Fruits of more than Paradise ; 
Earth by angel feet be trod, 
One great garden of her God ; 
Till are dried the martyr's tears, 
Through a glorious thousand years. 
Now in hope of Him we trust — 
" Earth to earth, and dust to dust!" 



A PARISIAN FAUXBOURG. 

'Tis light and air again : and lo ! the Seine, 
Yon boasted, lazy, livid, fetid drain ! 
With paper booths, and painted trees o'erlaid. 
Baths, blankets, wash-tubs, women, all but trade. 
Yet here are living beings, and the soil 
Breeds its old growth of ribaldry and broil. 
A whirl of mire, the dingy cabriolet 
Makes the quick transit through the crowded way ; 
On spurs the courier, creaks the crazy wain, 
Dragg'd through its central gulf of mud and stain ; 
Around our way-laid wheels the paupers crowd, 
Naked, contagious, cringing, and yet proud. 
Tlie whole a mass of folly, filth, and strife, 
Of heated, rank, corrupting, reptile life ; 
And, Aidless as their oozy tide, the throng 
Roll on with endless clamour, curse, and song. 
Fit for such tenants, lour on either side 
The hovels where tlie gang less live than hide ; 
Story on story, savage stone on stone, [thrown. 
Time-shatter'd, tempest-^ain'd, not built, but 
Sole empress of the portal, in full blow, 
The rouged grisette lays out her trade below, 
Even in her rags a thing of wit and wile, [smile. 
Eye, hand, lip, tongue, all point, and press, and 
Close by. in patch and print, the pedlar's stall 
Flutters its looser glories up the wall. 
Spot of corruption ! where the rabble rude 
Loiter round tinsel tomes, and figures nude ; 
Voltaire, and Lais, long alternate eyed. 
Till both the leper's soul and sous divide. 
Above, 'tis desert, save where sight is scared 
With the wild visage through the casement barr'd ; 
Or, swinging from their pole, chemise and sheet 
Drip from the attic o'er the fuming street. 



THE GRIEVINGS OF A PROUD SPIRIT. 

C RIME may be clear'd, and Sorrow's eyes be dried. 
The lowliest poverty be gilded yet ; 
The neck of airless, pale imprisonment 
Be lighten'd of its chains ! For all the ills 
That chance or nature lays upon our heads. 
In chance or nature there is found a cure: 
But self-abasement is beyond all cure ! 
The brand is there burn'd in the living flesh. 
That bears its mark to the grave. — That dagger's 
Into the central pulses of the heart ; [plunged 

The act is the mind's suicide ,- for which 
There is no after health — no hope — no pardon ! 



EFFECT OF ORATORY UPON A MUL- 
TITUDE. 

His words seem'd oracles [turn 
That pierced their bosoms ; and each man would 
And gaze in wonder on his neighbour's face, 
That with the like dumb wonder answer'd him : 
Then some would weep, some shout, some, deeper 

touch'd, 
Keep down the cry with motion of their hands, 
In fear but to have lost a syllable. 
The evening came, yet there the people stood, 
As if 'twere noon, and they the marble sea, 
Sleeping without a wave. You could have heard 
The beating of your pulses while he spoke. 



LOVE AN EVIL. 

Why, I could give you fact and argument. 
Brought from all earth — all life — all history ; — 
O'erwhelm you with sad tales, convictions strong, 
Till you could hate it ; tell of gentle lives, 
Light as the lark's upon the morning cloud, 
Struck down at once by the keen shaft of love ; 
Of maiden beauty, wasting all away. 
Like a departing vision into air ; 
Finding no occupation for her eyes, 
But to bedew her couch with midnight tears. 
Till death upon its bosom pillow'd her ; 
Of noble natures sour'd; rich minds obscured ; 
High hopes turn'd blank ; nay, of the kingly crown 
Mouldering amid the embers of the throne ; — 
And all by love. We paint him as a child, 
When he should sit, a giant on his clouds. 
The great, disturbing spirit of the world ! 



JEWELS. 

You shall have all that ever sparkled yet. 
And of the rarest. Not an Afric king 
Shall wear one that you love. The Persian's'brow, 
And the swart emperor's by the Indian stream 
Shall wane beside you ; you shall be a blaze 
Of rubies, your lips rivals ; topazes. 
Like solid sunbeams ; moony opals ; pearls, 
Fit to be Ocean's lamps; brown hyacinths. 
Lost only in your tresses ; chrysolites. 
Transparent gold ; diamonds, like new-shot stars, 
Or brighter, — like those eyes ! You shall have all 
That ever lurk'd in Eastern mines, or paved 
With light the treasure-chambers of the sea. 



MOUNTAINEERS. 

The mountain-horn shall ring, 
And every Alp shall answer; and the caves. 
And forest depths and valleys, and the beds 
Of tiie eternal snows, shall pour out tribes 
That know no Roman tyrants, — daring hearts. 
Swift feet, strong hands, that neither hunger, thirst. 
Nor winter cataracts, nor the tempest's roar. 
When the hills shake with thunderbolts, — can tire. 



WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. 



This poet was a native of Ayrshire, and was 
several years editor of a newspaper in Glas- 
gow. He was an antiquary, and particular- 
ly delig-hted in the study of the early ballads 
and other poetry of Scotland and England, of 
which he published a selection in 1827, entitled 
Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern, with an His- 
torical Introduction and Notes. In this vo- 
lume he published his own spirited lyric, The 
Cavalier's Song, professing an ignorance of 
its authorship. His Poems Narrative and 



Lyrical appeared in 1832. Some of them are 
exceedingly beautiful. Jeannie Morrison and 
"My heid is like to rend, Willie," are scarce- 
ly surpassed for simplicity and tenderness in 
the whole range of Scottish poetry. Mother- 
well, like Burns, was poor, and, like him, 
toward the close of his life, he sought ex- 
citement and forgetfulness in intem])erance. 
He died in Glasgow on the fifteenth of Octo- 
ber, 1835, in the thirty-seventh year of his 
age. 



MY HEID IS LIKE TO REND, WILLIE. 

Mt heid is Uke to rend, Willie, 

My heart is like to break, — 
I'm wearin' aff my feet, Willie, 

I'm dyin' for your sake ! 
O lay your cheek to mine, Willie, 

Your hand on my briest-bane, — 
O say ye'll think on me, Willie, 

When I am deid and gane ! 

It's vain to comfort me, Willie, 

Sair grief maun hae its will, — 
But let me rest upon your briest, 

To sab and greet my fill. 
Let me sit on your knee, Willie, 

Let me shed by your hair. 
And look into the face, Willie, 

I never sail see mair ! 

I'm sittin' on your knee, Willie, 

For the last time in my life, — 
A puir heart-broken thing, Willie, 

A milher, yet nae wife. 
Ay, press your hand upon my heart, 

And press it mair and mair, — 
Or it will hurst its silken twine, 

Sae Strang is its despair ! 

O wae's me for the hour, Willie, 

When we thegither met. — 
O wae's me for the time, Willie, 

That our first tryst was set ! 
wae's me for the loanin' green 

Where we were wont to gae,— f 
And wae's me for the destinie, 

That gart me luve thee sae ! 

O ! dinna mind my words, Willie, 

I downa seek to blame. — 
But O ! it's hard to live, Willie, 

And dree a warld's shame ! 
42 



Het tears are hailin' ower your cheek, 

And hallin' ower your chin ; 
Why weep ye sae for worthlessness, 

For sorrow and for sin? 

I'm weary o' this warld, Willie, 

And sick wi' a' I see, — 
I canna live as I ha'e lived, 

Or be as I should be. 
But fauld unto your heart, Willie, 

The heart that still is thine, — 
And kiss ance mair the white, white cheek. 

Ye said was red langsyne. 

A stoun' gaes through my heid, Willie, 

A sair stoun' through my heart, — 
O 1 baud me up and let me kiss 

Thy brow ere we twa pairt. 
Anither, and anither yet — 

How fast my life-strings break ! — 
Farevveel ! fareweel ! through yon kirk-yard 

Step lichtly for my sake ! 

The laverock in the lift, Willie, 

That lilts far ower our heid, 
Will sing the morn as merrilie 

Abune the clay-cauld deid ; 
And this green turf we're sittin' on, 

Wi' dew-draps shimmerin' sheen, 
Will hap the heart that luvit thee 

As warld has seldom seen. 

But O ! remember me, Willie, 

On land where'er ye be, — 
And O ! think on the leal, leal heart, 

That ne'er luvit ane but thee ! 
And O ! think on the cauld, cauld mools, 

That file my yellow hair, — 
That kiss the cheek, and kiss the chin, 

Ye never sail kiss mair ! 

2 E -2 319 



330 WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. 


THE WATER! THE WATER ! 


The water ! the water ! 




The mild and glassy wave. 


The water! the water ! 


Upon whose broomy banks I've long'd 


The joyous brook for me, 


To find my silent grave. 


That tuneth, through the quiet night, 


The water ! the water ! 


Its ever-hviug glee. 


Oh bless'd to me thou art; 


The water ! the water ! 


Thus sounding in life's solitude, 


That sleepless, merry heart. 


The music of my heart. 


Which gurgles on unstintedly, 


And filling it, despite of sadness. 


And loveth to impart 


With dreamings of departed gladness. 


To all around it some small measure 


The water ! the water ! 


Of its own most perfect pleasure. 


The mournful, pensive tone. 


The water ! the water ! 


That whisper'd to my heart how soon 


The gentle stream for me. 


This weary life was done. 


That gushes from the old gray stone, 


The water ! the water ! 


Beside the alder tree. 


That roU'd so bright and free, 


The water ! the water ! 


And bade me mark how beautiful 


That ever-bubbling spring 


Was its soul's purity ; 


I loved and looked on while a child, 


And how it glanced to heaven its wave. 


In deepest wondering, — 


As wandering on it sought its grave. 


And ask'd it whence it came and went, 




And when its treasures would be spent. 
The water ! the water ! 


^ 




The merry, wanton brook. 


JEANIE MORRISON. 


That bent itself to pleasure me. 




Like mine own shepherd crook. 


I've wander'd east, I've wandcr'd west, 


The water ! the water ! 


Through mony a weary way ; 


That sang so sweet at noon. 


But never, never can forget 


And sweeter still all night, to win 


The luve o' life's young day ! 


Smiles from the pale, proud moon. 


The fire that's blawn at Beltane e'en 


And from the little fairy faces 


May weel be black gi)i Yule ; 


That gleam in heaven's remotest places. 


But blacker fa' awaits the heart 


The water ! the water ! 


Where first fond luve grows cule. 


The dear and blessed thing, 


dear, dear Jeanie Morrison, 


That all day fed the httle flowers 


The thochts o' bygane years 


On its banks blossoming. 


Still fling their shadows ovver my path, 


The water ! the water ! 


And blind my een wi' tears : 


That murmur'd in my ear 


They blind my een wi' saut, saut tears. 


Hymns of a saint-like purity, 


And sair and ^ick I pine, 


That angels well might hear; 


As memory idly summons up 


And whisper, in the gates of heaven, 


The blithe blinks o' langsyne. 


How meek a pilgrim had been shriven. 






'Twas then we luvit ilk ithcr weel, 


The water ! the water ! 


'Twas then we twa did part ; 


Where I have shed salt tears, 


Sweet time — sad time ! twa bairns at scule, 


In loneliness and friendliness. 


Twa bairns, and but ae heart ! 


A thing of tender years. 


'Twas then we sat on ae laigh bink, 


The water ! the water ! 


To leir ilk ither lear ; 


Where I have happy been. 


And tones, and looks, and smiles were shed, 


And shower'd upon its bosom flowers 


Remember'd evermair. 


Cull'd from each meadow green, 




And idly hoped my life would be 


I wonder, Jeanie, aften yet. 


So crown'd by love's idolatry. 


When sittin' on that bink. 




Cheek toucliin' cheek, loof lork'd in loof. 


The water ! the water ! 


W.hat our wee heads could think ! 


My heart yet burns to think 


When haith bent doun ower ae braid page, 
Wi' ae huik on our knee, 


How cool thy fountain sparkled forth. 


For parched lip to drink. 


Thy lips were on thy lesson, but 
My lesson was in thee. 


The water ! the water ! 


Of mine own native glen ; 




The gladsome tongue I oft have heard, 


Oh, mind ye how we hung our heads. 


But ne'er shall hear again ; 


How cheeks brent red wi' shame. 


Though fancy fills my ear for aye 


Whene'er the scule-weans laughin' sai<J 


With sounds that live so far away ! 


We cleek'd thcgither hame 1 



WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. 



331 



And mind ye o' the Saturdays, 
(The scule then skail't at noon), 

When we ran aff to spcel the braes — 
The broomy braes o' June 1 

My head rins round and round about, 

My heart flows like a sea, 
As ane by ane the thochts rush back 

0' scule-time and o' thee. 

mornin' life ! O niornin' luve ! 
O lichtsome days and lang, 

When hinnie hopes around our hearts 
Like simmer blossoms sprang ! 

O, mind ye, luve, how aft we left 

The deavin', dinsome toun. 
To wander by the green burn-side. 

And hear it's water's croon 1 
The simmer leaves hung ower our heads. 

The flowers burst round our feet, 
And in the gloamin' o' the wood 

The throssil whusslit sweet ; 

The throssil whusslit in the wood, 

The burn sang to the trees, 
And we with nature's heart in tune, 

Concerted harmonies ; 
And on the knowe abune the burn 

For hours thegither sat 
In the silentness o' joy, till baith 

Wi' very gladness grat. 

Ay. ay, dear Jeanie Morrison, 

Tears trinkled doun your cheek, 
Like dew-beads on a rose, yet nane 

Had ony power to speak ! 
That was a time, a blessed time. 

When hearts were fresh and young, 
When freely gush'd all feelings forth, 

Unsyllabled — unsung ! 

1 marvel, Jeanie Morrison, 

Gin I hae been to thee 
As closely twined wi' earliest thochts 

As ye hae been to me 1 
Oh ! tell me gin their music fills 

Thine ear as it does mine ; 
Oh ! say gin e'er your heart grows grit 

Wi' dreamings o' langsyne 1 

I've wander'd east, I've wander'd west, 

I've borne a weary lot ; 
But in my wand'rings, far or near. 

Ye never were forgot. 
The fount that first burst frae this heart 

Still travels on its way ; 
And channels deeper as it rins 

The luve o' life's young day. 

O dear, dear Jeanie Morrison, 

Since we were sinder'd young, 
I've never seen your face nor heard 

The music o' your tongue ; 
But I could hug al! wretchedness, 

And happy could I die, 
Did I but ken your heart still drcam'd 

O' bygane days and me ! 



LINES GIVEN TO A FRIEND 

A DAY OR TWO BEFORE THE DECEASE OF THE WRITER. 

When I beneath the cold red earth am sleeping, 

Life's fever o'er. 
Will there for me be any bright eye weeping 

That I'm no more ] 
Will there be any heart still memory keeping 

Of heretofore ] 

When the great winds through leafless forests rush- 
Sad music make ; ['ig, 

When the swollen streams o'er crag and gully gush- 
Like full hearts break, [ing> 

Will there then one whose heart despair is crushing 
Mourn for my sake 1 

When the bright sun upon that spot is shining 

With purest ray. 
And the small flowers, their buds and blossoms 

Burst through that clay ; [twining. 
Will there be one still on that spot repining 

Lost hopes all day ] 

When no star twinkles with its eye of glory 

On that low mound ; 
And wintry storms have with their ruins hoary 

Its loneness crown'd ; 
Will there be then one versed in misery's story 

Pacing it round 1 

It may be so, — but this is selfish sorrow 

To ask such meed, — 
A weakness and a wickedness to borrow, 

From hearts that bleed. 
The wailings of to-day for what to-morrow 

Shall never need. 

Lay me then gently in my narrow dwelling. 
Thou gentle heart; 

And though thy bosom should with grief be swell- 
Let no tear start ; [in?) 

It were in vain, — for Time hath long been knell- 
Sad one, depart ! [ing — 



AGONY! KEEN AGONY! 

O AGoxY ! keen agony. 

For trusting heart, to find 
That vows believed were vows conceived 

As light as summer wind. 

agony ! fierce agony. 

For loving heart to brook 
In one brief hour the withering power 

Of unimpassion'd look. 

agony ! deep agony. 

For heart that's proud and high. 
To learn of fate how desolate 

It may be ere it die. 

O agony ! sharp agony 

To find how loth to part 
With the fickleness and faithlessness 

That break a trusting licart ! 



332 



WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. 



THEY COME! THE MERRY SUMMER 
MONTHS. 

They come ! the merry summer months 

Of beauty, song, and flowers ; 
They come ! the gladsome months that bring 

Thick leafiness to bowers. 
Up, up my heart ! and walk abroad, 

Fling cark and care aside, 
Seek silent hills, or rest thyself 

Where peaceful waters glide ; 
Or, underneath the shadow vast 

Of patriarchal tree, 
Scan through its leaves the cloudless sky 

In rapt tranquillity. 

The grass is soft, its velvet touch 

Is grateful to the hand, 
And, like the kiss of maiden love, 

The breeze is sweet and bland ; 
The daisy and the buttercup 

Are nodding courteously, 
It stirs their blood with kindest love 

To bless and welcome thee : 
And mark how with thine own thin locks — 

They now are silver gray- - 
That blissful breeze is wantoning, 

And whispering, "Be gay!" 

There is no cloud that sails along 

The ocean of yon sky 
But hath its own wing'd mariners 

To give it melody: 
Thou see'st their glittering fans outspread 

All gleaming like red gold. 
And hark ! with shrill pipe musical. 

Their merry course they hold. 
God bless them all, these little ones. 

Who far above this earth. 
Can make a scoff of its mean joys. 

And vent a nobler mirth. 

But soft ! mine ear upcaught a sound, 

From yonder wood it came ; 
The spirit of the dim, green glade 

Did breathe his own glad name ; — 
Yes, it is he ! the hermit bird. 

That apart from all his kind. 
Slow spells his beads monotonous 

To the soft western wind ; 
Cuckoo ! cuckoo ! he sings again — 

His notes are void of art. 
But simplest strains do soonest sound 

The deep founts of the heart ! 

Good Lord ! it is a gracious boon 

For thought-crazed wight like me, 
To smell again these summer flowers 

Beneath this summer tree ! 
To suck once more in every breath 

Their little souls away. 
And feed my fancy with fond dreams 

Of youth's bright summer day, 
Wlien, rushing forth like untamed coltj, 

The reckless truant boy 
Wander'd through green woods all day long, 

A mighty heart of joy ! 



I'm sadder now, I have had cause ; 

But oh ! I'm proud to think 
That each pure joy-fount loved- of yore 

I yet delight to drink ; — 
Leaf, blossom, blade, hill, valley, stream, 

The calm, unclouded sky. 
Still mingle music with my dreams, 

As in the days gone by. 
When summer's loveliness and light 

Fall round me dark and cold, 
I'll bear indeed life's heaviest curse — 

A heart that hath wax'd old. 



I AM NOT SAD. 

I AM not sad, though sadness seem 

At times to cloud my brow ; 
I cherish'd once a foolish dream, — 
Thank Heaven 'tis not so now. 
Truth's sunshine broke. 
And I awoke 
To feel 'twas right to bow 
To fate's decree, and this my doom, 
Tlie darkness of a nameless tomb. 

I grieve not, though a tear may fill 

Tills glazed and vacant eye ; 
Old thoughts will rise, do what we will. 
But soon again they die; 
An idle gush. 
And all is hush. 
The fount is soon run dry: 
And cheerly now I meet my doom. 
The darkness of a nameless tomb. 

I am not mad, although I see 
Things of no better mould 
Than I myself am, greedily 
In fame's bright page enroll'd. 
That they may tell 
The story well. 
What shines may not be gold. 
No, no ! content I court my doom, 
The darkness of a nameless tomb. 

The luck is theirs — the loss is mine. 

And yet no loss at all ; 
The mighty ones of eldest time, 
I ask where they did fall '? 
Tell me the one 
Who e'er could shun 
Touch with oblivion's pall 1 
All bear with me an equal doom, 
The darkness of a nameless tomb. 

Brave temple and huge pyramid. 

Hill sepulchred by art. 
The barrow acre-vast where hid 
Moulders some Nimrod's heart; 
Each monstrous birth 
Cumbers old earth. 
But acts a voiceless part. 
Resolving all to mine own doom. 
The darkness of a nameless tomb. 

Tradition with her palsied hand. 

And purblind history, may ■ 



WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. 



i33 



Grope and guess well that in this land 
Some great one lived his day ; 
And what is this, 
Blind hit or miss, 
But labour thrown away. 
For counterparts to mine own doom, 
The darkness of a nameless tomb 1 
I do not peak and pine away, 

Lo ! this deep bowl I quaff; 
If sigh 1 do, you still must say 
It sounds more like a laugh. 
'I'is not too late 
To separate 
The good seed from the chaff; 
And scotr at those who scorn my doom, 
The darkness of a nameless tomb. 
I spend no sigh, I shed no tear, 

Though life's first dream is gone; 
And its bright picturings now appear 
Cold images of stone ; 
I've learn'd to see 
The vanity 
Of lusting to be known, 
And gladly hail my changeless doom, 
The darkness of a nameless tomb ! 



And hearts hurst forth at last 

Into the light of day; — 
'Twere time all learn'd to be 
Fit for eternity ! 



BENEATH A PLACID BROW. 

Beneath a placid brow. 

And tear-unstained cheeky 
To bear as I do now 

A heart that well could break ; 
To simulate a smile 

Amid the wrecks of grief, — 
To herd among the vile, 

And therein seek relief, — 
For the bitterness of thought 
Were joyance dearly bought. 
When will man learn to bear 

His heart nail'd on his breast, 
With all its lines of care 

In nakedness confess'd 1 — 
Why, in this solemn mask • 

Of passion-wasted life. 
Will no one dare the task 

To speak his sorrows rife ? — 
Will no one bravely tell 
His bosom is a hell ? 
I scorn this hated scene 

Of masking and disguise. 
Where men on men still gleam, 

With falseness in their eyes ; 
Where all is counterfeit. 

And truth hath never say; 
Where hearts themselves do cheat, 

Concenling hope's decay, 
And writhing at the stake. 
Themselves do liars make. 

Go, search thy heart, poor fool ! 

.And mark its passions well; 
'Twere time to go to school, — 

'Twere time the truth to tell, — 
'Twere lime this world should cast 

fts infant slough away, 



THE CaV'aLIER'S SONG. 

A STEED, a steed of matchlesse speed ! 

A sword of metal keene ! 
All else to noble heartes is drosse, 

All else on earth is meane. 
The neighyiuge of the war-horse prowde. 

The rowlings of the drum, 
The clangor of the trumpet lowde. 

Be soundes from heaven that come ; 
And O ! the thundering presse of knightes 

Whenas their war-cryes swell. 
May tole from heaven an angel bright. 

And rouse a fiend from hell. 
Then mounte ! then mounte ! brave gallants all. 

And don your helmes amaine : 
Deathe's couriers, fame and honour, call 

Us to the field againe. 
No shrewish teares shall fill our eye 

When the sword-hilt's in our hand, — 
Heart-whole we'll part, and no whit sighe 

For the fayrest of the land ; 
Let piping swaine, and craven wight 

Thus weepe and puling crye, 
Our business is like men to fight, 

And hero-like to die ! 



WHAT IS GLORY? WHAT IS FAME? 

What is glor.y ? What is fame ] 
The echo of a long lost name ; 
A breath, an idle hour's brief talk ; 
The shadow of an arrant naught ; 
A flower that blossoms for a day, 

Dying next morrow : 
A stream that hurries on its way. 

Singing of sorrow ; — 
The last drop of a bootless shower, 
Shed on a sere and leafless bower; 
A rose, stuck in a dead man's breast, — 
This is the world's fame at the best ! 
What is fame 1 and what is glory 1 
A dream, — a jester's lying story. 
To tickle fools withal, or be 
A theme for second infancy ; 
A joke scrawled on an epitaph ; 
A grin at death's own ghastly laugh • 
A visioning that tempts the eye, 
But mocks the touch — nonentity; 
A rainbow, substanceless as bright, 

Flitting for ever 
O'er hill-top to more distant height, 

Nearing us never; 
A bubble, blown by fond conceit. 
In very sooth itself to cheat ; 
The witch-fire of a frenzied brain ; 
A fortune that to lose were gain ; 
A word of praise, ])erchancc of blame ; 
The wreck of a time-bandied name, — 
Ay, this is glory ! — this is fame ! 



THOMAS HOOD. 



This poet was born in London, in 1798. 
His father, a native of Scotland, was a book- 
seller and publisher. The subject of our 
biography was educated at an academy in 
Camberwell, and after taking a sea-voyage 
for the benefit of his health, was apprenticed 
to an uncle to learn the art of engraving. 
Some verses which he published meantime in 
the " London Magazine," attracted so much 
attention as to induce him to abandon the 
graver for the pen, and he has been since 
known as a man of letters. He is the author 
of "Whims and Oddities," " The Comic An- 
nual," and other humorous productions, some 
of which have had an unparalleled popularity ; 
and he is deserving of great reputation for his 
admirable compositions of a more serious de- 
scription, of which wc give liberal specimens. 
His longest poem, "The Plea of the Mid- 



summer Fairies," was published in 1828, and 
is designed to celebrate by an allegory that 
immortality which Shakspeare has conferred 
on the fairy mythology by his " Midsummer 
Night's Dream." "The Sylvan Fay," and 
"Ariel and the Suicide," in the following 
pages, are from this poem, and will give the 
reader an idea of its style. He soon after 
wrote "Tylney Hall," a novel, and on the 
death of Theodore Hook became editor of 
Colburn's " New Monthly Magazine," which 
he conducted until the beginning of the pre- 
sent year, when he established "Hood's 
Comic Miscellany," a monthly periodical of 
which the character is sufficiently indicated 
by its title. The striking lyric entitled "The 
Song of a Shirt," appeared but a few weeks 
ago, and is the latest of Mr. Hood's composi- 
tions which we have seen. 



THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM.* 

'Tw^s in the prime of summer time, 

An evening calm and cool, 
And four-and-twenty happy boys 

Came bounding out of school : 
There were some that ran and some that leapt, 

Like troutlets in a pool. 

Away they sped with gamesome minds, 

And souls untouch'd by sin ; 
To a level mead they came, and there 

They drave the wickets in : 
Pleasantly shone the setting sun 

Over the town of Lynn. 

Like sportive deer they coursed about, 

And shouted as they ran, — 
Turning to mirth all things of earth, 

As only boyhood can ; 
But the Usher sat remote from all, 

A melancholy man ! 

His hat was off, his vest was apart, 
To catch heaven's blessed breeze ; 

For a burning thought was in his brow, 
And his bosom ill at ease : 

* The late Admiral Bvirney went to school at an estab- 
lishment where the unhappy Eu?ene Aram was usher, 
subsequent to his crime. The admiral stated, that Aram 
was generally liked by the boys ; and that he used to dis- 
course to them about murder, in somewhat of the spirit 
which is attributed to him in this poem. 
334 



So he lean'd his head on his hands, and read 
The book between his knees ! 

Leaf after leaf he turn'd it o'er, 

Nor ever glanced aside ; 
For the peace of his soul he read that book 

In the golden eventide : 
Much study had made him very lean. 

And pale, and leaden-eyed. 

At last he shut the ponderous tome ; 

With a fast and fervent grasp 
He strain'd the dusky covers close, 

And fix'd the brazen hasp : 
" O God, could I so close my mind, 

And clasp it with a clasp !'' 

Then leaping on his feet upright, 

Some moody turns he took, — 
Now up the mead, then down the mead, 

And past a shady nook, — 
And, lo ! he saw a little boy 

That pored upon a book ! 

"My gentle lad, what is't you read — 

Romance or fairy fable ] 
Or is it some historic page, 

Of kings and crowns unstable ]" 
The young boy gave an upward glance, — 

" It is 'The Death of Abel.' " 

The Usher took six hasty strides, 
As smit with sudden pain, — 



THOMAS HOOD. 



335 



Six hasty strides beyond the place, 

Then slowly back again ; 
And down he sat beside the lad, 

And talk'd with him of Cain ; 

And, long since then, of bloody men, 

Whose deeds tradition saves ; 
Of lonely folk cut ofl' unseen. 

And hid in sudden graves ; 
Of horrid stabs, in groves forlorn, 

And murders done in caves ; 

And how the sprites of injured men 
Shriek upward from the sod, — 

Ay, how the ghostly hand will point 
To show the burial clod ; 

And unknown facts of guilty acts 
Are seen in dreams from God ! 

He told how murderers walk'd the earth 

Beneath the curse of Cain, — 
With crimson clouds before their eyes. 

And flames about their brain : 
For blood has left upon their souls 

Its everlasting stain ! 

" And well," quoth he, " I know, for truth, 
Their pangs must be extreme, — 

Wo, wo, unutterable wo — 

Who spill life's sacred stream ! 

For why ! Methought, last night, I wrought 
A murder in a dream ! 

" One that had never done me wrong — 

A feeble man. and old ; 
I led him to a lonely field, 

The moon shone clear and cold : 
Now here, said I, this man shall die, 

And I will have his gold ! 

" Two sudden blows with a ragged stick. 

And one with a heavy stone, 
One hurried gash with a hasty knife, — 

And then the deed was done : 
There was nothing lying at my foot. 

But lifeless flesh and bone ! 

" Nothing but Ufeless flesh and bone. 

That could not do me ill ; 
And yet I fear'd him all the more. 

For lying there so still : 
There was a manhood in his look, 

That murder could not kill ! 

"And, lo ! the universal air 

Scem'd lit with ghastly flame, — 

Ten thousand thousand dreadful eyes 
Were looking down in blame : 

I took the dead man by the hand, 
And call'd upon his name ! 

"O God, it made me quake to see 

Such sense within the slain ! 
But when I touch'd the lifeless clay. 

The blood gush'd out amain ! 
For every clot, a burning spot. 

Was scorching in my brain ! 

" ATy head was like an ardent coal. 
My heart as solid ice; 



My wretched, wretched soul, I knew. 

Was at the Devil's price : 
A dozen times I groan 'd ; the dead 

Had never groan'd but twice ! 

"And now from forth the frowning sky, 
From the heaven's topmost height, 

I heard a voice — the awful voice 
Of the blood-avenging sprite : — 

'Thou guilty man ! take up thy dead 
And hide it from my sight !' 

" I took the dreary body up. 

And cast it in a stream, — 
A sluggish water, black as ink, 

The depth was so extreme. 
My gentle boy, remember this 

Is nothing but a dream! 

" Down went the corse v/ith a hollow plunge, 

And vanish'd in the pool ; 
Anon I cleansed my bloody hands 

And wash'd my forehead cool, 
And sat among the urchins young 

That evening in the school ! 

" heaven, to think of their white souls. 

And mine so black and grim ! 
I could not share in childish prayer. 

Nor join in evening hymn : 
Like a devil of the pit I seem'd, 

Mid holy cherubim ! 

" And peace went with them one and all. 

And each calm pillow spread ; 
But guilt was my grim chamberlain 

That lighted me to bed. 
And drew my midnight curtains round. 

With fingers bloody red ! 

"All night I lay in agony, 

In anguish dark and deep ; 
My fever'd eyes I dared not close. 

But stared aghast at sleep; 
For sin had render'd unto her 

The keys of hell to keep ! 

"All night I lay in agony, 

From weary chime to chime, 
With one besetting horrid hint, 

That rack'd me all the time, — 
A mighty yearning, like the first 

Fierce impulse unto crime ! 

"One stern, tyrannic thought, that made 

All other thoughts its slave ; 
Stronger and stronger every pulse 

Did that temptation crave, — 
Still urging me to go and see 

The dead man in his grave ! 

" Heavily I rose up, — as soon 

As light was in the sky, — 
And sought the black accursed pool 

With a wild misgiving eye ; 
And I saw the dead in the river bed, 

For the faithless stream was dry ! 

"Merrily rose the lark, and shook 
The dew-drop from its wing : 



3S6 



THOMAS HOOD. 



But I never mark'd its morning flight, 

I never heard it sing : 
For I was stooping once again 

Under the horrid thing. 

" With breathless speed, like a soul in chase, 

I took him up and ran, — 
There was no time to dig a grave 

Before the day began : 
In a lonesome wood, with heaps of leaves, 

I hid the murder'd man ! 

" And all that day I read in school, 
But my thought was other where ; 

As soon as the mid-day task was done. 
In secret I was there : 

And a mighty wind had swept the leaves, 
And still the corse was bare ! 

" Then down I cast me on my face, 

And first began to weep. 
For I knew my secret then was one 

That earth refused to keep ; 
Or land or sea, though he should be 

Ten thousand fathoms deep ! 

" So wills the fierce avenging sprite. 

Till blood for blood atones ! 
Ay, though he's buried in a cave. 

And trodden down with stones. 
And years have rotted oflT his flesh — 

The world shall see his bones ! 

« O God, that horrid, horrid dream 

Besets me now awake ! 
Again — again, with a dizzy brain, 

The human life I take ; 
And my red right hand grows raging hot. 

Like Cranmer's at the stake. 

" And still no peace for the restless clay 

Will wave or mould allow ; 
The horrid thing pursues my soul, — 

It stands before me now !" — 
The fearful boy look'd up, and saw 

Huge drops upon his brow ! 

That very night, while gentle sleep 

The urchin eyelids kiss'd, 
Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, 

Through the cold and heavy mist ; 
And Eugene Aram walk'd between. 

With gyves upon his wrist. 



THE SYLVAN FAIRY. 

Thex next a merry woodsman, clad in green, 
Slept vanward from his mates, that idly stood 

Each at his proper ease, as they had been 
Nursed in the liberty of old Sherwood, 
And wore the livery of Robin Hood, 

Who wont in forest shades to dine and sup, — 
So came this chief right frankly, and made good 

His haunch against his axe, and thus spoke up. 

Doffing his cap, which was an acorn's cup : — 

"We be small foresters and gay, who tend 
On trees, and all their furniture of green, 



Training the young boughs airily to bend, 

And show blue snatches of the sky between: — 
Or knit more close intricacies, to screen 

Birds' crafty dwellings as may hide them best. 
But most the timid blackbird's — she, that seen, 

Will bear black poisonous berries to her nest. 

Lest man should cage the darlings of her breast. 

" We bend each tree in proper attitude, 

And founting willows train in silvery falls ; 

We frame all shady roofs and arches rude, 
And verdant aisles leading to Dryad's halls, 
Or deep recesses where the echo calls ; — 

We shape all plumy trees against the sky. 
And carve tall elms' Corinthian capitals, — 

When sometimes, as our tiny hatchets ply, 

Men say, the tapping woodpecker is nigh. 

" Sometimes we scoop the squirrel's hollow cell. 
And sometimes carve quaint letters on trees' rind, 

That haply some lone musing wight may spell 
Dainty Aminta, — Gentle Rosalind, — 
Or chastest Laura, — sweetly call'd to mind 

In sylvan solitudes, ere he lies down ; — 

And sometimes we enrich gray stems, with twined 

And fragrant ivy, — or rich moss, whose brown 

Burns into gold as the warm sun goes down. 

" And, lastly, for mirth's sake and Christmas cheer. 
We bear the seedling berries, for increase. 

To graft the Druid oaks, from year to year. 
Careful that misletoe may never cease ; — 
Wherefore, if thou dost prize the shady peace 

Of sombre forests, or to see light break 

Through sylvan cloisters, and in spring release 

Thy spirit amongst leaves from careful ake. 

Spare us our lives for the green Dryad's sake." 



ARIEL AND THE SUICIDE. 

Let me remember how I saved a man. 
Whose fatal noose was fasten'd on a bough, 

Intended to abridge his sad life's span; 

For haply I was by when he began 
His stern soliloquy in life's dispraise. 

And overheard his melancholy plan, 
How he had made a vow to end his days. 
And therefore follow 'd him in all his ways. 

Through brake and tangled copse, for much he 
loath'd 

All populous haunts, and roam'd in forests rude, 
To hide himself from man. But I had clothed 

My delicate limbs with plumes, and still pursued. 

Where only foxes and wild cats intrude. 
Till we were come beside an ancient tree 

Late blasted by a storm. Here he renew'd 
His loud complaints, — choosing that spot to be 
The scene of his last horrid tragedy. 

It was a wild and melancholy glen. 

Made gloomy by tall firs and cypress dark. 

Whose roots, like any bones of buried men, 
Push'd through the rotten sod for fear's remark ; 




F^ (K c pa E 2. 



THOMAS HOOD. 



337 I 



A hundred horrid stems, jagged and stark, 
Wrestled with crooked arms in hideous fray. 

Besides sleek ashes with their dapj)led bark, 
Like crafty serpents climbing for a prey, 
M^ith many blasted oaks moss-grown and gray. 

But hero upon his final desperate clause 
Suddenly I pronounced so sweet a strain, 

Like a pang'd nightingale, it made him pause. 
Till half the frenzy of his grief was slain. 
The sad remainder oozing from his brain 

In timely ecstasies of healing tears. 

Which through his ardent eyes began to drain ;- 

Meanwhile the deadly fates unclosed their shears ;- 

So pity me and all my fated peers. 



FAIR INES. 

Oh, saw ye not fair Ines 1 

She's gone into the west. 
To dazzle when the sun is down, 

And rob the world of rest: 
She took our daylight with her, 

The smiles that we love best, 
With morning blushes on her cheek, 

And pearls upon her breast. 

Oh turn again, fair Ines, 

Before the fall of night. 
For fear the moon should shine alone, 

And stars unvivall'd bright; 
And blessed will the lover be 

That walks beneath their light, 
And breathes the love against thy cheek 

I dare not even write ! 

Would I had been, fair Ines, 

That gallant cavalier 
Who rode so gayly by thy side, 

And whisper'd thee so near ! — 
Were there no bonny dames at home, 

Or no true lovers here. 
That he should cross the seas to win 

The dearest of the dear ? 

I saw thee, lovely Ines, 

Descend along the shore. 
With bands of noble gentlemen, 

And banners waved before ; 
And gentle youth and maidens gay. 

And snowy plumes they wore ; 
It would have been a beauteous dream, 

— If it had been no more ! 

Alas, alas, fair Ines, 

She went away with song, 
With music waiting on her steps, 

And shoutings of the throng; 
But some were sad and felt no mirth, 

But only music's wrong, 
In sounds that sang Farewell, farewell, 

To her you've loved so long. 
43 



Farewell, farewell, fair Ines, 

That vessel never bore 
So fair a lady on its deck. 

Nor danced so light before, — 
Alas for pleasure on the sea. 

And sorrow on the shore ! 
The smile that blest one lover's heart 

Has broken many more ! 



SIGH ON, SAD HEART! 

Sigh on, sad heart, for love's eclipse. 

And beauty's fairest queen, 
Though 'tis not for my peasant lips 

To soil her name between : 
A king might lay his sceptre down. 

But I ain poor and nought. 
The brow should wear a golden crown, 

That wears her in its thought. 

The diamonds glancing in her hair, 

Whose sudden beams surprise, 
Might bid such humble hopes beware 

The glancing of her eyes: 
Yet looking otice, I look'd too long. 

And if my love is sin, 
Death follows on the heels of wrong. 

And kills the crime within. 

Her dress scem'd wove of lily leaves 

It was so pure and fine. 
Oh lofty wears, and lowly weaves, 

But hoddan gray is mine; 
And homely hose must step apart. 

Where garter'd princes stand, 
But may he wear my love at heart 

That wins her lily hand ! 

Alas! there's far from russet frize 

To silks and satin gowns. 
But I doubt if God made like degrees. 

In courtly hearts and clowns. 
My father wrong'd a maiden's mirth. 

And brought her cheeks to blame. 
And all that 's lordly of my birth. 

Is my reproach and shame ! 

'Tis vain to weep — 'tis vain to sigh, 

'Tis vain this idle speech. 
For where her happy pearls do lie. 

My tears may never reach ; 
Yet when I 'm gone, e'en lofty pride 

May say of what has been. 
His love was nobly born and died, 

Though all the rest was mean ! 

My speech is rude, — but speech is weak 

Such love as mine to tell. 
Yet had I words, I dare not speak, 

So, lady, fare thee well ; 
I will not wish thy better state 

Was one of low degree, 
But I must vi'ecj) that partial fate 

Made such a churl of me. 
2P 



338 



THOMAS HOOD. 



THE SONG OF THE SHIRT. 

With fingers weary and worn, 

With e3'elids heavy and red, 
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, 

Plying her needle and thread — 
Stitcii ! stitch ! stitch ! 

In poverty, hunger, and dirt. 
And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch, 

She sang the " Song of the Shirt !" 

<< Work ! work ! work ! 

While the cock is crowing aloof! 
And work — work — work, 

Till the stars shine through the roof! 
It's oh ! to be a slave 

Along with the barbarous Turk, 
Where woman has never a soul to save, — 

If THIS is Christian work ! 

" Work — work — work ! 

'I'ill the brain begins to swim ; 
Work — work — work. 

Till the eyes are heavy and dim ! 
Scam, and gusset, and band ; 

Band, and gusset, and seam ; 
Till over the buttons I fall asleep. 

And sew them on in my dream ! 

'• Oh ! men with sisters dear ! 

Oh ! men with mothers and wives ! 
It is not linen you're wearing out, 

But human creatures' lives ! 
Stitch — stitch — stitch, 

In poverty, hunger, and dirt ; 
Sewing at once, with a double thread, 

A SHROUD as well as a shirt ! 

" But why do I talk of death. 

That phantom of grisly bone; 
I hardly fear his terrible shape, 

It seems so like my own ! 
It seems so like my own — 

Because of the fast I keep ; 
O God ! that bread should be so dear, 

And flesh and blood so cheap ! 

" Work — work — work ! 

My labour never flags ; 
And what are its wages ? A bed of straw, 

A crust of bread — and rags : 
A shatter'd roof — and this naked floor — 

A table — a broken chair — 
And a wall so blank my shadow I thank 

For sometimes falling there ! 

" Work — work — work ! 

From weary chime to chime ; 
Work — work — work. 

As prisoners work, for crime ! 
Band, and gusset, and seam ; 

Seam, and gusset, and band ; 
Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumb'd 
. As well as the weary hand I 

" Work — work — work. 

In the dull December light, 
And work — work — work. 

When the weather is warm and bright : 



While underneath the eaves 
The brooding swallows cling. 

As if to show me their sunny backs, 
And twit me with the spring. 

" Oh ! but to breathe the breath 

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet ; 
With the sky above my head, 

And the grass beneath my feet; 
For only one short hour 

To feel as I used to feel. 
Before I knew the woes of want. 

And the walk that costs a meal ! 

" Oh ! but for one short hour ! 

A respite, however brief! 
No blessed leisure for love or hope ; 

But only time for grief! 
A little weeping would ease my heart — 

But in their briny bed 
My tears must stop, for every drop 

Hinders needle and thread !" 

With fingers weary and worn. 

With eyelids heavy and red, 
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, 

Plying her needle and thread ; 
Stitch — stitch — stitch ! 

In poverty, hunger, and dirt; 
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch — 
Would that its tone could reach the rich !- 

She sang this " Song of the Shirt !" 



SILENCE. 

Theue is a silence where hath been no sound, 
There is a silence where no sound may be. 
In the cold grave — under the deep, deep sea. 

Or in wide desert where no life is found, [found ; 

Which hath been mute, and still must sleep pro- 
No voice is hush'd — no life treads silently. 
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free, 

That never spoke, over the idle ground : 

But in green ruins, in the desolate walls 
Of antique palaces, where man hath been, 

Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls. 
And owls, that flit continually between. 

Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan. 

There the true silence is, self-conscious and alone. 



DEATH. 

It is not death, that sometime in a sigh 
This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight ; 

That sometime these bright stars, that now reply 
In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night; 
That this warm cojiscious flesh shall perish quite. 

And all life's ruddy springs forget to flow ; 
That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal spright 

Be lapp'd in alien clay and laid below ; 

It is not death to know this, — but to know 
That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves 

In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go 
So duly and so oft, — and when grass waves 

Over the past-away, there may be then 

No resurrection in the minds of men. 



THOMAS HOOD. 



339 



A RUSTIC ODE. 

Oh ! weli may poets make a fuss 
In summer time, and sigh, " O rus !" 

Of Loudon pleasures sick : 
My iieart is all at pant to rest 
In greenwood shades, — my eyes detest 

This endless meal of brick ! 
What joy have I in June's return T 
My feet are parch'd, my eyeballs burn ; 

I scent no flowery gust: 
But faint the flagging zephyr springs, 
With dry Macadam on its wings, 

And turns me "dust to dust."' 

My sun his daily course renews 
Due east, but with no eastern dews ; 

The path is dry and hot! 
His setting shows more tamely still, 
He sinks behind no purple hill, 

But down a chimney's pot ! 

Oh ! but to hear the milk-maid blithe, 
Or early mower whet his scythe 

The dewy meads among! 
My grass is of that sort, — alas ! 
That makes no hay, call'd sparrow-grass 

By folks of vulgar tongue ! 
Oh ! but to smell the woodbine sweet ! 
I think of cowslip-cups, — but meet 

With very vile rebuffs ! 
For meadow buds, I get a whiflT 
Of Cheshire cheese, or only sniff 

The turtle made at Cuff's. 
How tenderly Rousseau review'd 
His periwinkles ! mine are stevv'd ! 

My rose blooms on a gown ! 
I hunt in vain for eglantine, 
And find my blue-bell on the sign 

That marks the Bell and Crown ! 

Where are ye, birds ! that blithely wing 
From tree to tree, and gayly sing 

Or mourn in thickets deep ? 
My cuckoo has some ware to sell. 
The watchmen is my Philomel, 

My blackbird is a sweep ! 

Where are ye, linnet ! lark ! and thrush ! 
That perch on leafy bough and bush. 

And tune the various song 1 
Two hurdy-gurdis, and a poor 
Street-Handel grinding at my door, 

Are all my " tuneful throng." 

Where are ye, early-purling streams. 
Whose waves reflect the morning beams. 

And colours of the skies 1 
My rills are only puddle-drains 
From shambles, or reflect the stains 

Of calimanco-dyes. 

Sweet are the little brooks that run 
O'er pebbles glancing in the sun. 

Singing in soothing tones : 
Not thus the city streamlets flow ; 
They make no music as they go. 

Though never " off the stones." 



Where are ye, pastoral, pretty sheep. 
That wont to bleat, and frisk, and leap 

Beside your woolly damsl 
Alas! instead of harmless crooks, 
My Corydons use iron hooks. 

And skin — not shear — the lambs. 

The pipe whereon, in olden day. 
The Arcadian herdsmen used to play 

Sweetly, here soundeth not ; 
But merely breathes unwelcome fumes, 
Meanwhile the city boor consumes 

The rank weed — " piping hot." 

All rural things are vilely mock'd, 
On every hand the sense is shock'd 

With objects hard to bear: 
Shades — vernal shades ! where wine is sold ! 
And for a turfy bank, behold 

An Ingram's rustic chair ! 

Where are ye, London meads and bowers, 
And gardens redolent of flowers 

Wherein the zephyr wons ! 
Alas ! Moor Fields are fields no more! 
See Hatton's Garden brick'd all o'er; 

And that bare wood, — St. John's. 

No pastoral scene procures me peace ; 

I hold no leasowes in my lease. 

No cot set round with trees : 
No sheep-white hill my dwelling flanks ; 
And omnium furnishes my banks 

With brokers, not with bees. 

Oh I well may poets make a fuss 
In summer time, and sigh, " O rus !" 

Of city pleasures sick : 
My heart is all at pant to rest 
In greenwood shades, — my eyes detest 

This endless meal of brick. 



FROM AN ODE TO MELANCHOLY. 

Oh ! clasp me, sweet, whilst thou art mine, 
And do not take my tears amiss ; 

For tears must flow to Wash away 

A thought that shows so stern as this : 

Forgive, if somewhile I forget. 
In wo to come, the present bliss. 

As frighted Proserpine let fall 
Her flowers at the sight of Dis, 
Even so the dark and bright will kiss. 

The sunniest things throw sternest shade, 
And there is even a happiness 

That makes the heart afraid ! 

Now let us with a spell invoke 

The full-orb'd moon to grieve our eyes ; 
Not bright, not bright, but, with a cloud 

Lapp'd all about her, let her rise 
All pale and dim, as if from rest 
The ghost of the late buried sun 

Had crept into the skies. 

The moon ! she is the source of sighs, 



340 



THOMAS HOOD. 



The very face to make us sad ; 
If hut to think in other times 

The same calm quiet look she had, 
As if the world held nothing base, 

Of vile and mean, of fierce and bad ; 
The same fair light that shone in streams, 

The fairy lamp that charm'd the lad ; 
For so it is, with spent delights 

She taunts men's brains, and makes them mad 
All things are touch'd with melancholy, 

Born of the secret soul's mistrust, 
To feel her fair ethereal wings 

Weigh'd down with vile degraded dust; 
Even the bright extremes of joy 

Bring on conclusions of disgust, 
Like the sweet blossoms of the May, 

Whose fragrance ends in must. 

Oh give her, then, her tribute just, 
Her sighs and tears, and musings holy ! 

There is no music in the life 
That sounds with idiot laughter solely ; 

There's not a string attuned to mirth, 
But has its chord in melancholy. 



I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER. 

I nEMEMBER, I remember, 

The house where I was born, 
The little window where the sun 

Came peeping in at morn : 
He never came a wink too soon, 

Nor brought too long a day ; 
But now, I often wish the night 

Had borne my breath away ! 

I remember, I remember, 

The roses — red and white ; 
The violets and the lily-cups, 

Those flowers made of light ! 
The lilacs where the robin built. 

And where my brother set 
The laburnum on his birth-day, — 

The tree is living yet ! 

I remember, I remember, 

Where I was used to swing ; 
And thought the air must rush as fresh 

To swallows on the wing : 
My spirit flew in feathers then, 

That is so heavy- now, 
And summer pools could hardly cool 

The fever on my brow ! 

I remember, I remember, 

The fir trees dark and high; 
I used to think their slender tops 

Were close against the sky : 
It was a childish ignorance, 

But now 'tis little joy 
To know I 'm farther off from heaven 

Than when I was a boy. 



TO A COLD BEAUTY. 

Lady, wouldst thou heiress be, 
To winter's cold and cruel part? 

When he sets the rivers free, 

Thou dost still lock up thy heart; — 

Thou that shouldst outlast the snow, 

But in the whiteness of thy brow I 

Scorn and cold neglect are made 
For winter gloom and winter wind. 

But thou wilt wrong the summer air, 
Breathing it to words unkind, — 

Breath which only should belong 

To love, to sunlight, and to song ! 

When the little buds unclose. 

Red, and white, and pied, and blue, 

And that virgin flower, the rose, 
Opes her heart to hold the dew. 

Wilt thou lock thy bosom up 

With no jewel in its cup] 

Let not cold December sit 

Thus in love's peculiar throne; — 

Brooklets are not prison'd now. 
But crystal frosts are all agone. 

And that which hangs upon the spray, 

It is no snow, but flower of May ! 



LOVE. 



Love, dearest lady, such as I would speak, 
Lives not within the humour of the eye; — 
Not being but an outward phantasy. 

That skims the surface of a tinted cheek, — 

Else it would wane with beauty, and grow weak. 
As if the rose made summer, — and so lie 
Amongst the perishable things that die. 

Unlike the love which I would give and seek : 
Whose health is of no hue — to feel decay 

With cheeks' decay, that have a rosy prime. 
Love is its own great loveliness alway. 

And takes new lustre from the touch of time ; 
Its bough owns no December and no May, 

But bears its blossom into winter's clime. 



BY A LOVER. 

Bt every sweet tradition of true hearts. 
Graven by time, in love with his own lore ; 

By all old martyrdoms and antique smarts, 
Wherein love died to be alive the more; 
Yea, by the sad impression on the shore. 

Left by the drown'd Leander, to endear 
That coast for ever, where the billow's roar 

Moaneth for pity in the poet's ear ; 

By Hero's faith, and the forboding tear 
That quench'd her brand's la^t twinkle in its fall ; 

By Sappho's leap, and the low rustling fear 
That sigh'd around her flight; I swear by all, 

The world shall find such pattern in my act, 

As if love's great examples still were lack'd. 



ROBERT POLLOK. 



This poet was born of parents in humble 
circumstances at Eaglesliam, in Ayrshire, in 
1799. He was educated at the University of 
Glasgow, and in 18-27 took orders in the Scot- 
tish Secession Church. In the same year he 
published The Course of Time, and, on account 
of impaired health, left Scotland with an in- 
tention to proceed to Italy, but died, on his 
way, at Southampton, on the fifteenth of Sep- 
tember. 

The Course of Time was written during his 
student life, and when, unfriended and un- 
known, he offered it to the publishers of Edin- 
burgh, none of them were willing to bring it 
out. The manuscript was fortunately seen by 
Professor Wilson, who quickly perceived its 
merits, and effected an arrangement between 
the poet and Messrs. Blackwood, which re- 
sulted in its publication. The plot of the 
poem is very simple : The events of time are 
finished, and a being from some remote world 
arrives in Paradise, where he inquires the 
meaning of the hell he has seen on his way 



heavenward ; a bard, once of our earth, sings 
the story of humanity, from the beginning 
until time is finished, 

the righteous s:ived, the wirked damned, 

And God's eternal government a())irnved. 

The subject is a noble one, and in the poem 
there are graphic conceptions and passages of 
beauty and tenderness ; but it is disfigured by 
amplifications and a redundancy of moral pic- 
tures ; it has no continuous interest, and in 
parts of it which should have been and which 
the author endeavoured to make the most im- 
pressive, particularly those in which he sub- 
jects himself to a comparison with Dante 
and Milton, he utterly failed. 

The Course of Time has been almost uni- 
versally read. I have been informed that not 
less than twenty editions of it have been sold 
in the United States, and it has been fre- 
quently reprinted in vScotland. For its popu- 
larity, however, both here and in Great Britain, 
it is more indebted to its theology than to its 
merits as a poem. 



BYRON. 

Admire the goodness of Almighty God ! 
He riches gave, he intellectual strength, 
To few, aiid therpfore none commands to be 
Or rich, or learn'd ; nor promises reward 
Of peace to these. On all, He moral worth 
Bestow'd, and moral tribute ask'd from all. 
And who that could not pay \ who born so poor, 
Of intellect so mean, as not to know 
Whatseem'd the best; and, knowing, might not dol 
As not to know what God and conscience bade, 
x\nd what they bade not able to obey 1 
And he, who acted thus, fuliiU'd the law 
Eternal, and its promise reaped of peace ; 
Found peace this way alone : who sought it else, 
Sought mellow grapes beneath the icy pole. 
Sought blooming roses on the cheek of death, 
Sought substance in a world of fleeting shades. 

Take one example, to our purpose quite, 
A man of rank, and of capacious soul. 
Who riches had and fame, beyond desire, 
An heir of flattery, to titles born, 
And reputation, and luxurious life; 
Yet, not content with ancestorial name, 
Or to be known because his fathers were, 
He on this height hereditary stood. 
And, gazing higher, purposed in his heart 



To take another step. Above him seem'd, 
Alone, the mount of song, the lofty beat 
Of canonized bards ; and thitherward. 
By nature taught, and inward melody, 
In prime of youth, he bent his eagle eye. [read; 
No cost was spared. What books he wish'd, he 
What sage to hear, he heard ; what scenes to see, 
He saw. And first in rambling school-boj- days 
Britannia's mountain-walks, and heath-girt lakes, 
And story-teUing glens, and founts, and brooks. 
And maids, as dew-drops pure and fair, his soul 
With grandeur fiU'd, and melody, and love. 
Then travel came, and took him where he wish'd. 
He cities saw, and courts, and princely pomp ; 
And mused alone on ancient mountain-brows; 
And mused on battle-fields, where valour fought 
In other days ; and mused on ruins gray 
With years ; and drank from old and fabulous wells, 
And pluck'dthevinethat first-born prophets pluck'd, 
And mused on famous tombs, and on the wave 
Of ocean mused, and on the desert waste ; 
The heavens and earth of every country saw. 
Where'er the old inspiring genii dwelt, 
Aught that could rouse, expand, refine the soul, 
Thither he went, and meditated there. 

Hetouch'dhisharp.and nations heard, entranced, 
As some vast river of unfailing source, 
Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flow'd, 
2 F 2 341 



342 



ROBERT POLLOK. 



And open'd new fountains in the human heart. 
Where fancy halted, weary in her flight, 
In other men, his, fresh as morning, rose. 
And soar'd untrodden heights, and seem'd at home 
Where angels bashful look'd. Others, though great, 
Beneath their argument seem'd struggling whiles ; 
He from above descending stoop'd to touch 
The loftiest thought ; and proudly stoop'd, as though 
It scarce deserved his verse. With Nature's self 
He seem'd an old acquaintance, free to jest 
At will with all her glorious majesty. 
He laid his hand upon " the ocean's mane," 
And play'd familiar with his hoary locks; 
Stood on the Alps, stood on the Apennines, 
And with the thunder talk'd, as friend to friend ; 
And wove his garland of the lightning's wing, 
In sportive twist, the lightning's fiery wing. 
Which, as the footsteps of the dreadful God, 
Marching upon the storm in vengeance, seem'd ; 
Then turn'd, and with the grasshopper, who sung 
His evening song beneath his feet, conversed. 
Suns, moons, and stars, and clouds, his sisters were ; 
Rocks, mountains,meteors,seasand winds and storms 
His brothers, youncrer brothers, whom he scarce 
As equals deem'd. All passions of all men, 
The wild and tame, the gentle and severe; 
All thoughts, all maxims, sacred and profane ; 
All creeds, all seasons, Time, Eternity ; 
All that was hated, and all that was dear ; 
All that was hoped, all that was feared, by man ; 
He toss'd about, as tempest, wither'd leaves. 
Then, smiling, look'd upon the wreck he made. 
With terror now he froze the cowering blood, 
And now dissolved the heart in tenderness ; 
Yet would not tremble, would not weep himself; 
But back into his soul retired, alone. 
Dark, sullen, proud, gazing contemptuously 
On hearts and passions prostrate at his feet. 
So ocean from the plains his waves had late 
To desolation swept, retired in pride, 
Exulting in the glory of his might, 
And seem'd to mock the ruin he had wrought. 

As some fierce comet of tremendous size, 
To which the stars did reverence, as it pass'd. 
So he through learning and through fancy took 
His flight sublime, and on the loftiest top 
Of fame's dread mountain sat ; not soil'd and worn, 
As if he from the earth had lal)our'd up ; 
But as some bird of heavenly plumage fair, 
He look'd, which down from higher regions came, 
And perch'd it there, to see wluit lay beneath. 
The nations gazed, and wonder'd much, and prais'd. 
Critics before him fell in humble plight. 
Confounded fell, and made debasing signs [selves 
To catch his eye, and stretch'd, and swell'd them- 
To bursting nigh, to utter bulky words 
Of admiration vast: and many, too. 
Many that aim'd to imitate his flight, 
With weaker wing, unearthly fluttering made. 
And gave abundant sport to after days. [much. 

Great man ! the nations gazed, and wonder'd 
And praised ; and many call'd his evil good. 
Wits wrote in favour of his wickedness, 
And kings to do him honour took delight. 
Thus, full of titles, flattery, honour, fame, 



Beyond desire, beyond amhition, full, 

He died. He died of what? Of wretchedness; — 

Drank every cup of joy, heard every trump 

Of fame, drank early, deeply drank, drank draughts 

That common millions might have quench'd; then 

Of thirst, because there was no more to drink, [died 

His goddess, Nature, wooed, embraced, enjoy'd, 

Fell from his arms, abhorr'd ; his passions died, 

Died, all but dreary, solitary pride ; 

And all his sympathies in being died. 

As some ill-guided bark, well built and tall, 

Which angry tides cast out on desert shore, 

And then, retiring, left it there to rot 

And moulder in the winds and rains of heaven ; 

So he, cut from the sympathies of life, 

And cast ashore from pleasure's boisterous surge, 

A wandering, weary, worn, and wretched thing, 

Scorch'd, and desolate, and blasted soul, 

A gloomy wilderness of dying thought, — 

Repined, and groan'd, and wither'd from the earth. 

His groanings fiU'd the land, his numbers fill'd ; 

And yet he seem'd ashamed to groan: Poor man! — 

Ashamed to ask, and yet he needed help. 

Proof this, beyond all lingering of doubt, 
That not with natural or mental wealth 
Was God delighted, or his peace secured; 
That not in natural or mental wealth 
Was human happiness or grandeur found. 
Attempt, how monstrous, and how surely vain ! 
With things of earthly sort, with aught but God, 
With aught but moral excellence, truth, and love 
To satisfy and fill the immortal soul ! 
Attempt, vain inconceivably ! attempt, 
To satisfy the ocean with a drop, 
To marry immortality to death. 
And with the unsubstantial shade of time, 
To fill the embrace of all eternity ! 



THE MILLENNIUM. 

The animals, as once in Eden, lived 
In peace. The wolf dwelt with the lamb, the hear 
And leopard with the ox. With looks of love. 
The tiger and the scaly crocodile 
Together met, at Gambia's palmy wave. 
Perch'd on the eagle's wing, the bird of song. 
Singing, arose, and visited the sun ; 
And with the falcon sat the gentle lark. 
The little child Icap'd from his mother's arms 
And stroked the crested snake, and roH'd unhurt 
Among his speckled waves, and wish'd him home; 
And sauntering school-boys, slow returning, play'd 
At eve about the lion's den, and wove, 
Into his shaggy mane, fantastic flowers. 
To meet the husbandman, early abroad, 
Hasted the deer, and waved its vv'oody head ; 
And round liis dewy steps, the hare, unscared, 
Sported, and toy'd familiar with his dog. 
The flocks and herds, o'er hill and valley spread. 
Exulting, cropp'd the ever-budding herb, 
The desert blossom'd, and the barren sung. 
Justice and Mercy, Holiness and Love, 
Among the people waik'd, Messiah reign'd. 
And earth kept jubilee a thousand years. 



ROBERT POLLOK. 



343 



THE AUTHOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIM- 
SELF. 

In humble dwelling born, retired, remote; 
In rural quietude, 'mong hills, and streams, 
And melancholy deserts, where the sun 
Saw, as he pass'd, a shepherd only, here 
And there, watching his Utile flock, or heard 
The ploughman talking to his steers ; his hopes, 
His morning hopes, awoke before him, smiling, 
Among the dews and holy mountain airs; 
And fancy colour'd thein witli every hue 
Of he.ivenly loveliness. But soon his dreams 
Of childhood fled awa}^ those rainbow dreams. 
So innocent and fiir, that wither'd age. 
Even at the grave, cleared up his dusty eye. 
And passing all between, look'd fondly back 
To see them once again, ere he departed : 
These fled away, and anx:ious thought, that vcish'd 
To go, yet whither knew not well to go, 
Possess'd his soul, and held it still awhile. 
He listen'd, and heard from far the voice of fame, 
Heard and was charm'd ; and deep and sudden vow 
Of resolution made to be renown'd ; 
And deeper vow'd again to keep his vow. 
His parents saw, his parents whom God made 
Of kindest heart, saw, and indulged his hope. 
The ancient page he turu'd, read much, thought 

much, 
And with old bards of honourable name 
Measured his soul severely ; and lojk'd up 
To fame, ambitious of no second place. 
Hope grew from inward faith, and promised fair. 
And out before him open'd many a path 
Ascending, where the laurel highest waved 
Her branch of endless green. He stood admiring ; 
But stood, admired, not long. The harp he seized, 
The harp he loved, loved better than bis life. 
The harp which utter'd deepest notes, and held 
The ear of thought a captive to its song. 
He search'd and meditated much, and whiles, 
With rapturous hand, in secret touch'd the lyre. 
Aiming at glorious strains; and search'd again 
For theme dese;ving of immortal verse; 
Chose now, and now refused, unsatisfied ; 
Pleased, then displeased, and hesitating still. 

Thus stood his mind, when round him came a 
cloud. 
Slowly and heavily it came, a cloud 
Of ills we mention not: enough to say, 
'Twas cold, and dead, impenetrable gloom. 
He saw its dark a[>proach, and saw liis hopes, 
One after one, put out, as nearer still 
It drew his soul ; but f linted not at first, 
Fainted not soon. He knew the lot of man 
Was trouble, and prepared to bear the worst ; 
Endure whate'er should come, without a sigh 
Endure, and drink, even to the very dregs, 
The bitterest cup that time could nieasnre out; 
And. having done, look up, and ask for more. 

He call'd philosophy, and with his heart 
Reason'd. He call'd religion, too, but call'J 
Reluctantly, and therefore was not heard. 
Ashamed to be o'ermatch'd by earthly woes. 
He sought, and sought with eye that dimm'd aparo. 



To find some avenue to light, some place 

On which to rest a hope ; but sought in vain. 

Darker and darker still the darkness grew. 

At length he sunk, and disappointment stood 

His only comforter, and mournfully 

Told all was past. His interest in life. 

In being, ceased : and now he seem'd to feel. 

And shudder'd as he felt, his powers of mind 

Decaying in the spring-time of his day. 

The vigorous, weak become; the clear, obscure; 

Memory gave up her charge ; Decision reel'd ; 

And from her flight, Fancy return'd, return'd 

Because she found no nourishtnent abroad. 

The blue heavens wither'd, and the moon, and sun, 

And all the stars, and the green earth, and morn 

And evening, wither'd ; and the eyes, and smiles, 

And faces of all men and women, wither'd, 

Wither'd to him ; and all the universe, 

liike something which had been, appear'd, but novy 

Was dead and mouldering fast away. He tried 

No more to hope, wish'd to forget his vow, 

Wish'd to forget his harp ; then ceased to wish 

That was his last : enjoyment now was done. 

He had no hope, no wish, and scarce a fear. 

Of being sensible, and sensible 

Of loss, he as some atom seem'd, which God 

Had made superfluously, and needed not 

To build creation with ; but back again 

To nothing threw, and left it in the void. 

With everlasting sense that once it was. 

Oh ! who can tell what days, what nights he spent, 
Of tideless, vyaveless, sailless, shoreless wo I 
And who can tell how many, glorious once. 
To others and themselves of promise full. 
Conducted to this pass of human thought. 
This wilderness of intellectual death. 
Wasted and pined, and vaiiish'd from the earth. 
Leaving no vestige of memorial there ! 

It was not so with him. When thus he lay. 
Forlorn of heart, wither'd and desolate, 
As leaf of autumn, which the wolfish winds, 
Selecting from its falling sisters, chase, 
Far from its native grove, to lifeless wastes. 
And leave it there alone, to be forgotten 
Eternally, God pass'd in mercy by — 
His praise be ever new! — and on him breathed, 
And bade him live, and put into his hands 
A holy harp, into his lips a song. 
That roU'd its numbers down the tide of time : 
Am!)itious now, but little to be praised 
Of men ali>ne; ambitious most, to be 
Approved of God, the Judge of all ; and have 
His name recorded in the book of life. 

Such things were disappointment and remorse ; 
And oft united both, as friends severe, 
To teach men wisdom : but the fool, untaught. 
Was foolish still. His ear he stopp'd, his eyes 
He shut, and blindly, deafly obstinate, 
Fi)rced desperately his way from wo to wo. 

One place, one only place, there was on earth, 
Where no man e'er was fool, however mad. 
"Men may live fools, but fools tbey cannot die." 
Ah ! 'twas a truth most true ; and sung in time. 
And to the sons of in" n, by one well known 
On earth for lofty verse and lofty sense. 



344 



ROBERT POLLOK. 



REPUTATION. 

Good' name was dear to all. Without it, none 
Could soundly sleep, even on a royal bed. 
Or drink, with relish from a cup of gold ; 
And with it, on his borrow'd straw, or by 
The leafless hedge, beneath the open heavens, 
The weary beggar took untroubled rest. 
It was a music of most heavenly tone, 
To which the heart leap'd joyfully, and all 
The spirits danced. For honest fame, men laid 
Their heads upon the block, and, while the axe 
Desceinled, look'd and smiled. It was of price 
Invaluable. Riches, health, repose. 
Whole kingdoms, life, were given for it, and he 
Who got it was the winner still ; and he 
Who sold it durst not open his ear, nor look 
On human face, he knew himself so vile. 



RUMOUR AND SLANDER. 

RuMouii was the messenger 
Of defamation, and so swift that none 
Could be the first to tell an evil tale ; 
And was, vvitiial, so infamous for lies. 
That he who of her sayings, on his creed, 
The fewest enter'd, was deem'd wisest man. 
The fool, and many who had credit, too, 
For wisdom, grossly swallow'd all she said, 
Unsifted ; and although, at every word. 
They heard her contradict herself, and saw 
Hourly they were imposed upon and mock'd. 
Yet still they ran to hear her speak, and stared. 
And wonder'd much, and stood aghast, and said 
It could not be; and, while they blush'd for shame 
At their own faith, and seein'd to doubt, believed. 
And whom they met, with many sanctions, told. 
So did experience fail to teach ; — so hard 
It was to learn this simple truth, — confirm'd 
At every corner by a thousand proofs, — 
That common fame most impudently lied. 

'Twas slander fiU'd her mouth with lying words. 
Slander, the foulest whelp of sin. The man 
In whom this spirit enter'd was undone. 
His tongue was set on fire of hell, his heart 
Was black as death, his legs were faint with haste 
To propagate the lie his soul had framed, 
His pillow was the peace of families 
Destroy'd, the sigh of innocence reproach'd. 
Broken friendships, and the strife of brotherhoods. 
Yet did he spare his sleep, and hear the clock 
Number the midnight watches, on his bed, 
Devising mischief more; and early rase. 
And made most hellish meals of good men's names. 

From door to door you might have seen him speed, 
Or placed amidst a group of gaping fools. 
And whispering in their ears with his foul lips. 
Peace fled the neighbourhoo<l in which he made 
His haunts; and, like a moral pestilence. 
Before his breath the healthy shoots and blooms 
Of social joy and happiness decayed. 



Fools only in his company were seen, 

And those forsaken of God, and to themselves 

Given up. The prudent shunn'd him and his house 

As one who had a deadly moral plague. 

And fain would all have shunn'd him at the day 

Of judgment; but in vain. All who gave ear 

With greediness, or wittingly their tongues 

Made herald to his lies, around him wail'd ; 

While on his face, thrown back by injured men, 

In characters of ever-blushing shame, 

Appear'd ten thousand slanders, all his own. 



WISDOM. 

Wisdom is humble, said the voice of God. 
'Tis proud, the world replied. Wisdom, said God, 
Forgives, forbears, and sutiers, not for fear 
Of man, but God. Wisdom revenges, said 
The world, is quick and deadly of resentment, 
Thrusts at the very shadow of affront. 
And hastes, by death, to wipe its honour clean. 
Wisdom, said God, loves enemies, entreats, 
Solicits, begs for peace. ^V'isdom, replied 
The world, hates enemies, will not ask ])eace, 
Conditions spurns, and triumphs in their fall. 
Wisdom mistrusts itself, and leans on heaven, 
Said God. It trusts and loans upon itself. 
The world replied. Wisdom retires, said God, 
And counts it bravery to bear reproach. 
And shame, and lowly poverty, upright; 
And weeps with all who have just cause to weep. 
Wisdom, replied the world, struts forth to gaze. 
Treads the broad stage of life with clamorous foot, 
Attracts all praises, counts it bravery 
Alone to wield the sword, and rush on death ; 
And never wee[)s, but for its own disgrace. 
Wisdom, said God, is highest, when it stoops 
Lowest before the Holy Throiie ; throws down 
Its crown, abased; forgets itself, admires. 
And breathes adoring praise. There vi'isdom stoops, 
Indeed, the world replied, there stoops, because 
It must, but stoops with dignity ; and thinks 
And meditates the while of inward worth. 

l^hus dill Almighty God, and thus the world, 
Wisdom define ; and most the world believed. 
And boldly call'd the truth of God a lie. 
Hence, he that to the worldly wisdom shaped 
His character, became the favourite 
Of men, was honourable term'd, a man 
Of spirit, noble, glorious, lofty soul ! 
And as he cross'd the earth in chase of dreams. 
Received prodigious shouts of warm ai)plause. 
Hence, who to godly \\isdom framed his life. 
Was counted moan, and spiritless, and vile ; 
And as he walk'd obscurely in the path [tongue, 
Which led to heaven, fools hiss'd with serpent 
And pour'd contempt upon his holy head. 
And pour'd contempt on all who praised his name. 

But false as this account of wisdom was. 
The world's I mean, it was his best, the creed 
Of sober, grave, and philosophic men. 
With much research and cogitation framed, 
Of men who with the vulgar scorn'd to sit. 



T. B. MACAULAY. 



Thomas Eabington Macaulay is the son 
of Zacharv Macaulay, principally distin- 
guished as a philanthropist, and as the coadju- 
tor of Clarkson in the cause of Anti-slavery. 
He was educated at Cambridge, and gradu- 
ated with the highest honours. While at 
college he was a contributor to " Knight's 
Quarterly Magazine," and many of his best 
ballads were first published in that periodical. 
He chose the law for his profession. In 1825 
his celebrated article on Milton appeared in 
the "Edinburgh Review," and excited much 
attention and panegyric. Tliis was the first 
of a series of papers which have been con- 
tinued at intervals to the present day, all 
displaying strong peculiarities of character, 
analytical acuteness,. a vast range of know- 
ledge, considerable dialectical skill, great in- 
dependence and affluence of thought, and 
much splendour, energy, and eloquence of dic- 
tion. He soon after entered political life, was 
elected to parliament, and became one of the 
sturdiest, most eloquent, and most efficient of 
the supporters of the Reform Bill in the House 
of Commons. His various speeches, from 
1831 to 1844, as reported in "Hansard's Par- 
liamentary Debates," are characterized by 



nearly the same qualities of manner which 
distinguish his written compositions, though 
pervaded often by even more directness, in- 
tensity, fire, and intellectual hardihood. They 
are not included in the collection of his mis- 
cellaneous writings. On the triumph of his 
party he was sent on a lucrative commission 
to India. He was Secretary at War under 
Lord Melbourne's administration, but, of 
course, shared in the defeat of the Whigs. He 
is said to be now engaged on an historical 
work, which will try the whole power and 
resources of his mind. 

As a poet, Macaulay displays the same 
vehemence and energy, the same rush of style, 
which have conferred such popularity on his 
prose. His earliest efforts in the ballad-style 
are probably his best, though his " Lays of 
Ancient Rome" are thought to exhibit more 
true imagination than he has shown in any 
of his preceding works. The sparkle and 
glow of his verse always take strong hold 
upon the sensibility and fancy, and of all 
writers, he is the last who could be accused 
of tediousness. The extracts we give will 
better illustrate his manner than the most 
laboured analysis. 



HORATIUS. 

A LAY MADE ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE CITV CCCLX. 

Lars Pousexa of Clusium 

By the Nine Gods he swore 
That the great house of Tarquin 

Should suffer wrong no more. 
By the Nine Gods he swore it, 

And named a trysting day. 
And bade his messengers ride forth, 
East and west, and south and north, 

To summon his array. 

East and west, and south and north 

The messengers ride fast, 
And tower, and town, and cottage 

Have heard the trumpet's blast. 
Shame on the false Etruscan 

Who lingers in his home, 
When Porsena of Clusium 

Is on the march for Rome. 
44 



The horsemen and the footmen 

Are pouring in amain 
From many a stately market-place; 

From many a fruitful plain ; 
From many a lonely hamlet, 

Which, hid by beech and pine, 
Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest 

Of purple Appennine; 

From lordly Volaterrse, 

Where scowls the far-famed hold 
Piled by the hands of giants 

For godlike kings of old ; 
From seagirt Populonia, 

Whose sentinels descry 
Sardinia's snowy m(JUiitain-tops 

Fringing the southern sky ; 

From the proud mart of Pisse, 
Queen of the western waves, 

Where ride Massiiia's triremes 
Heavy with fair-hair'd slaves ; 



345 



346 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 



From where sweet Clanis wanders 
Through corn and vines and flowers; 

From where Cortona Ufts to heaven 
Her diadem of towers. 

Tall are the oaks whose acorns 

Drop in dark A user's rill; 
Fat are the stags that champ the boughs 

Of the Ciminian hill ; 
Beyond all streams Clitumnus 

Is to the herdsman dear ; 
Best of all pools the fowler loves 

The great Volsinian mere. 

But now no stroke of woodman 

Is heard by Auser's rill ; 
No hunter tracks the stag's green path 

Up the Ciminian hill ; 
Unwatch'd along Clitumnus 

Grazes the milk-white steer ; 
Unharm'd the water-fowl may dip 

In the Volsinian mere. 

The harvests of Arretium, 

This year, old men shall reap ; 
This year, young boys in Unibro 

Shall plunge the struggling sheep ; 
And in the vats of Luna, 

This year, the must shall foam 
Round the white feet of laughing girls, 

Whose sires have march'd to Rome. 

There be thirty chosen prophets, 

The wisest of the land, 
Who alway by Lars Porsena 

Both morn and evening stand ; 
Evening and morn the Thirty 

Have turned the verses o'er. 
Traced from the right on linen white 

By mighty seers of yore. 

And with one voice the Thirty 

Have their glad answer given : 
" Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena ; 

Go forth, beloved of Heaven ; 
Go, and return in glory 

To Clusium's royal dome ; 
And hang round Nurscia's altars 

The golden shields of Eome." 

And now hath every city 

Sent up her tale of men ; 
The foot are fourscore thousand, 

The horse are thousands ten. 
Before the gates of Sutrium 

Is met the great array, 
A proud man was Lars Porsena 

Upon the trysting day. 

For all the Etruscan armies 

Were ranged beneath his eye, 
And many a banish'd Roman, 

And many a stout ally ; 
And with a mighty following 

To join the muster came 
The Tusculan Mamilius, 

Prince of the Latian name. 



But by the yellow Tiber 

Was tumult and aflVight: 
From all the spacious champaign 

To Rome men took their flight. 
A mile around the city, 

The throng stopp'd up the ways ; 
A fearful sight it was to see 

Through two long nights and days. 

For aged folk on crutches, 

And women great with child. 
And mothers sobbing over babes 

That clung to them and smiled. 
And sick men borne in litters 

High on the necks of slaves. 
And troops of sun-burnt husbandmen 

With reaping-hooks and staves. 

And droves of mules and asses 

Laden with skins of wine. 
And endless flocks of goats and sheep, 

And endless herds of kine. 
And endless trains of wagons 

That creak'd beneath their weight 
Of corn-sacks and of household goods, 

Choked every roaring gate. 

Now, from the rock Tarpeian, 

Could the wan burghers spy 
The line of blazing villages 

Red in the midnight sky. 
The fathers of the city, 

They sat all night and day. 
For every hour some horseman came 

With tidings of dismay. 

To eastward and to westward 

Have spread the Tuscan bands ; 
Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecote. 

In Crustumerium stands. 
Verbenna down to Ostia 

Hath wasted all the plain ; 
Astur hath storm'd Janiculum, 

And the stout guards are slain. 

I wis in all the senate, 

There was no heart so bold, ' 

But sore it ached, and fast it beat. 

When that ill news was told. 
Forthwith up rose the consul, 

Up rose the Fathers all ; 
In haste they girded up their gowns, 

And hied them to the wall. 

They held a council standing 

Before the River-gate ; 
Short time was there, ye well may guess, 

For musing or debate. 
Out spoke the consul roundly : 

"The bridge must straight go down; 
For, since Janiculum is lost. 

Naught else can save the town." 

Just then a scout came flying. 
All wild with haste and fear; 

"To arms! to arms! Sir Consul; 
Lars Porsena is here." 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 



347 



On the low hills to westward 

The consul tix'J his eye, 
And saw the swarthy storm of dust 

Kise fiist along the sky. 

And nearer fast and nearer 

Doth the red whirlwind come ; 
And louder still and still more loud, 
From underneath that rolling cloud, 
Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud, 

The trampling, and the hum. 
And plainly and more plainly 

Now through the gloom appears, 
Far to left and far to right, 
In broken gleams of dark-blue light, 
The long array of helmets bright, 

The long array of spears. 

And plainly and more plainly, 

Above that glimmering line, 
Now might ye see the banners 

Of twelve fair cities shine ; 
But the banner of proud Clusium 

Was highest of them all, 
The terror of the Umbrian, 

The terror of the Gaul. 

And plainly and more plainly 

Now might the burghers know. 
By port and vest, by horse and crest, 

Each warlike Lucumo. 
There Cilnius of Arretium 

On his fleet roan was seen ; 
And Astur of the four-fold shield. 
Girt with the brand none else may wield, 
Tolumnius with the belt of gold, 
And dark Verbenna from the hold 

By reedy Thrasymene. 

Fast by the royal standard, 

O'erlooking all the war, 
Lars Porsena of Clusium 

Sate in his ivory car. 
By the right wheel rode Mamilius, 

Prince of the Latian name ; 
And by the left false Sextus, 

That wrought the deed of shame. 

But when the face of Sextus 

Was seen among the foes, 
A yell that rent the firmament 

From all the town arose. 
On the house-tops was no woman 

But spate towards him and hiss'd ; 
No child hut scream'd out curses, 

And shook its little fist. 

But the consul's brow was sad, 

And the consul's speech was low, 
And darkly look'd he at the wall. 

And darkly at the foe. 
"Their van will be upon us 

Before the bridge goes down ; 
And if they once may win the bridge, 

What hope to save the town V 

Then out spake brave Horatius, 
The captain of the gate : 



" To every man upon this earth 

Death cometh soon or late. 
And how can man die better 

Than facing fearful odds, 
For the ashes of his fathers 

And the temples of his gods, 

" And for the tender mother 

Who dandled him to rest, 
And for the wife who nurses 

His baby at her breast. 
And for the holy maidens 

Who feed the eternal flame. 
To save thein from false Sextus 

That wrought the deed of shame ? 

" Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, 

With all the speed ye may ; 
I, with two more to help me. 

Will hold the foe in play. 
In yon strait path a thousand 

May well be stoi>p'd by three. 
Now who will stand on either hand, 

And keep the bridge with me ]" 

Then out spake Spurius Lartius; 

A Ramnian proud was he : 
" Lo, I will stand at thy. right hand, 

And keep the bridge with thee." 
And out spake strong Herminius; 

Of Titian blood was he : 
" I will abide on thy left side, 

And keep the bridge with thee." 

" Horatius," quoth the consul, 

" As thou sayest, so let it be." 
And straight against that great array 

Forth went the dauntless Three. 
For Romans in Rome's quarrel 

Spared neither land nor gold. 
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, 

In the brave days of old. 

Then none was for a party ; 

Then all were for the state ; 
Then the great man help'd the poor. 

And the poor man loved the great : 
Then lands were fairly portion'd ; 

Then spoils were fairly sold ; 
The Romans were like brothers 

In the brave days of old. 

Now Roman is to Roman 

More hateful than a foe, 
And the Tribunes beard the high. 

And the Fathers grind the low- 
As we wax hot in faction. 

In battle we wax cold ; 
Wherefore men fight not as they fought 

In the brave days of old. 

Now while the Three were tightening 

Their harness on their backs. 
The consul was the foremost man 

To take in hand an axe ; 
And Fathers mix'd with commons 

Seized hatchet, bar, and crow. 
And smote upon the planks above, 

And loosed the props below. 



348 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 



Meanwhile the Tuscan army, 

Right glorious to behold, 
Came flashing back the noonday light, 
Rank behind rank, like surges bright 

(3f a broad sea of gold. 
Four hundred trumpets sounded 

A peal of warlike glee. 
As that great host, with measured tread, 
And spears advanced, and ensigns spread, 
RoU'd slowly towards the bridge's head, 

Where stood the dauntless Three. 

The Three stood calm and silent 

And look'd upon the foes, 
And a great shout of laughter 

From all the vanguard rose : 
And forth three chiefs came spurring 

Before that mighty mass ; 
To earth they sprang, their swords they drew. 
And lifted high their shields, and flew 

To win the narrow pass; 

Annus from green Tifernum, 

Lord of the Hill of Vines ; 
And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves 

Sicken in Uva's mines ; 
And Picus, long to Clusium 

Vassal in peace and war. 
Who led to fight his Umbrian powers 
From that gray crag where, girt with towers, 
The fortress of Nequinum lowers 

O'er the pale waves of Nar. 

Stout Lartius hurl'd down Annus 

Into the stream beneath : 
Herminius struck at Seius, 

And clove him to the teeth : 
At PicQS brave Horatius 

Darted one fiery thrust ; 
And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms 

Clash'd in the bloody dust. 

Then Ocnus of Falerii 

Rush'd on the Roman Three ; 
And liausulus of Urgo, 

The rover of the sea ; 
And Aruns of Volsinium, 

Who slew the great wild boar. 
The great wild boar that had his den 
Amidst the reeds of Corsa's fen, 
And wasted fields, and slaughter'd men. 

Along Albinia's shore. 

Herminius smote down Aruns : 

Lartius laid Ocnus low : 
Right to the heart of Lausulus 

Horatius sent a blow. 
" Lie there," he cried, " fell pirate ! 

No more, aghast and pale. 
From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark 
The track of thy destroying bark. 
No more Campania's hinds shall fly 
To woods and caverns when they spy 

Thy thrice accursed sail." 

But now no sound of laughter 
Was heard amongst the foes. 



A wild and wrathful clamour 

From all the vanguard rose. 
Six spears' length from the entrance 

Halted that mighty mass. 
And for a space no man came forth 

To win the narrow pass. 

But hark ! the cry is Astur: 

And lo ! the ranks divide; 
And the great lord of Ijuna 

Comes with -his stately stride. 
Upon his ample shoulders 

Clangs loud the four-fold shield. 
And in his hand he shakes the brand 

Which none but he can wield. 

He smiled on those bold Romans 

A smile serene and high ; 
He eyed the flinching Tuscans, 

And scorn was in his eye. 
Quoth he, " The she-wolf's litter 

Stand savagely at bay : 
But will ye dare to follow. 

If Astur clears the way 1" 

Then, whirling up his broadsword 

With both hands to the height. 
He rush'd against Horatius, 

And smote with all his might. 
M^ith shield and blade Horatius 

Right deftly turn'd the blow. 
The blow, though turn'd, came yet too nigh; 
It miss'jl his helm, but gash'd his thigh : 
The Tuscans raised a joyful cry 

To see the red blood flow. 

He reel'd, and on Herminius 

He leaned one breathing-space; 
Then, like a wild-cat mad with wounds, 

Sprang right at Astur's face. 
Through teeth, and skull, and helmet, 

So fierce a thrust he sped. 
The good sword stood a hand-breadth out 

Behind the Tuscan's head. 

And the great lord of Luna 

Fell at that deadly stroke. 
As falls on Mount Alvernus 

A thunder-smitten oak. 
Far, o'er the crashing forest 

The giant arms lie spread ; 
And the pale augurs, muttering low, 

Gaze on the blasted head. 

On Astur's throat Horatius 

Right firmly press'd his heel. 
And thrice and four times tugg'd amain 

Ere he wrench'd out the steel. 
"And see," he cried, "the welcome. 

Fair guests, that waits you here ! 
What noble Lucumo comes next 

To taste our Roman cheer!" 

But at his haughty challenge 

A sullen murmur ran, 
Mingled of wrath, and shame, and dread, 

Along that glittering van. 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 



349 



There lack'il not men of prowess, 

Nor men of lordly race; 
For all Etruria's noblest 

Were round the fatal place. 

But all Etruria's noblest 

Felt their hearts sink to see 
On the earth the bloody corpses, 

In the path the dauntless Three : 
And, from the ghastly entrance 

Where those bold Romans stood. 
All shrank, like boys who unaware, 
Ranging the woods to start a hare, 
Come to the mouth of the dark lair 
Where, growling low, a fierce old bear 

Lies amidst bones and blood. 

Was none who could be foremost 

To lead such dire attack ; 
But those behind cried " Forward !" 

And those before cried " Back !" 
And backward now and forward 

Wavers the deep array ; 
And on the tossing sea of steel, 
To and fro the standards reel ; 
And the victorious trumpet-peal 

Dies fitfully away. 

Yet one man for one moment 

Strode out before the crowd ; 
Well known was he to all the Three, 

Ami they gave him greeting loud. 
" Now welcome, welcome, Sextus ! 

Now welcome to thy home ! 
Why dost thou stay, and turn away? 

Here lies the road to Rome." 

Thrice look'd he on the city ; 

Thrice look'd he at the dead ; 
And thrice came on in fury, 

And thrice tiirn'd back in dread : 
And, white with fear and hatred, 

Scowl'd at the narrow way 
Where, wallowing in a pool of blood. 

The bravest Tuscans lay. 

But meanwhile axe and lever 

Have manfully been plied. 
And now the bridge hangs tottering 

Above the boiling tide. 
" Come back, come back, Horatius !" 

Loud cried the Fathers all. 
"Back, Lartius! back, Herminius! 

Back, ere the ruin fall !" 

Back darted Spurius Lartius ; 

Herminius darted back: 
And, as they pass'd, beneath their feet 

They felt the timbers crack. 
But when they turn'd their faces, 

And on the farther shore 
Saw brave Horatius stand alone. 

They would have cross'd once more. 

But with a crash like thunder 

Fell every loosen'd beam, 
And, like a <lam, the mighty wreck 

Lay right athwart the stream : 



And a long shout of triumph 
Rose from the walls of Rome 

As to the highest turret-tops 
Was splash'd the yellow foam. 

And, like a horse unbroken 

When first he feels the rein, 
The furious river struggled hard, 

And toss'd his tawny mane ; 
And burst the curb, and bounded. 

Rejoicing to be free ; 
And whirling down, in fierce career. 
Battlement, and plank, and pier, 

Rush'd headlong to the sea. 

Alone stood brave Horatius, 

But constant still in mind ; 
Thrice thirty thousand foes before, 

And the broad flood behind. 
" Down with him !" cried false Sextus, 

With a smile on his pale face. 
"Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena, 

" Now yield thee to our grace." 

Round turned he, as not deigning 

Those craven ranks to see ; 
Naught spake he to Lars Porsena, 

To Sextus naught spake he ; 
But he saw on Palatinus 

The white porch of his home ; 
And he spake to the noble river 

That rolls by the towers of Rome. 

» O Tiber ! father Tiber ! 

To whom the Romans pray, 
A Roman's life, a Roman's arms, 

Take thou in charge this day !" 
So he spake, and speaking sheathed 

The good sword by his side. 
And, with his harness on his back, 

Plunged headlong in the tide. 

No sound of joy or sorrow 

Was heard from either bank ; 
But friends and foes in dumb surprise, 
With parted lips and straining eyes, 

Stood gazing where he sank: 
And when above the surges 

They saw his crest appear, 
All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, 
And even the ranks of Tuscany 

Could scarce forbear to cheer. 

But fiercely ran the cuiTent, 

Swollen high by months of rain: 
And fast his blood was flowing ; 

And he was sore in pain. 
And heavy with his armour. 

And spent with changing blows: 
And oft they thought him sinking, 

But still again he rose. 

Never, I ween, did swimmer. 

In such an evil case. 
Struggle through such a raging flood 

Safe to the landing-place. 
But his limbs were borne up bravely 

By the brave heart within, 
2Q 



350 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 



And our good father Tiber 
Bare bravely up his chin. 

«' Curse on him !" quoth false Sextus; 

" Will not the villain drown 1 
But for this stay, ere close of day 

We should have sack'd the town !" 
"Heaven help him !" quoth Lars Porsena, 

" And bring him safe to shore ; 
For such a gallant feat of arms 

Was never seen before." 

And now he feels the bottom ; 

Now on dry earth he stands ; 
Now round him throng the fathers 

To press his gory hands ; 
And now with shouts and clapping, 

And noise of weeping loud, 
He enters through the river-gate, 

Borne by the joyous crowd. 

They gave him of the corn-land. 

That was of public right. 
As much as two strong oxen 

Could plough from morn till night ; 
And they made a molten image, 

And set it up on high, 
And there it stands unto this day 

To witness if I lie. 

It stands in the Comitium, 

Plain for all folk to see ; 
Horatius in his harness, 

Halting upon one knee: 
And underneath is written, 

In letters all of gold. 
How valiantly he kept the bridge 

In the brave days of old. 

And still his name sounds stirring 

Unto the men of Rome, 
As the trumpet blast that cries to them 

To charge the Volsciaii home ; 
And wives still pray to Juno 

For boys with hearts as bold 
As his who kept the bridge so well 

In the brave days of old. 

And in the nights of winter, 

When the cold north winds blow. 
And the long howling of the wolves 

Is heard amidst the snow ; 
When round the lonely cottage 

Roars loud the tempest's din, 
And the good logs of Algidus 

Roar louder yet within ; 

When the oldest cask is opened. 

And the largest lamp is lit, 
When the chestnuts glow in the embers, 

And the kid turns on the spit; 
When young and old in circle 

Around the firebrands close ; 
When tlie girls are weaving baskets, 

And the lads are shaping bows ; 

When the goodman mends his armour. 
And trims his helmet's plume ; 

When the goodwifc's shuttle merrily 
Goes flashing through the loom ; 



With weeping and with laughter 

Still is the story told, 
How well Horatius kept the bridge 

In the brave days of old. 



THE BATTLE OF IVRY. 

Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, 

From whom all glories are ! 
And glory to our sovereign liege, 

King Henry of Navarre ! 
Now let there be the merry sound 

Of music and the dance, 
Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, 

Oh pleasant land of France ! 
And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, 

Proud city of the waters, 
Again let rapture light the eyes 

Of all thy mourning daughters. 
As thou wert constant in our ills. 

Be joyous in our joy, 
For cold, and stiff, and still are they 

Who wrought thy walls annoy. 
Hurrah ! hurrah ! a single field 

Hath turn'd the chance of war, 
Hurrah ! hurrah ! for Ivry, 

And King Henry of Navarre ! 

Oh ! how our hearts were beating. 

When, at the dawn of day. 
We saw the army of the league 

Dravyn out in long array ; 
With all its priest-led citizens. 

And all its rebel peers. 
And Appenzel's stout infantry. 

And Egmont's Flemish spears. 
There rode the brood of false Lorraine, 

The curses of our land ! 
And dark Mayenne was in the midst, 

A truncheon in his hand ; 
And, as we look'd on them, we thought 

Of Seine's empurpled flood. 
And good Coligni's hoary hair 

All dabbled with his blood ; 
And we cried vinto the living God, 

Who rules the fate of war. 
To fight for his own holy name, 

And Henry of Navarre. 

The king is come to marshal us, 

In all his armour drest. 
And he has bound a snow-white plume 

Upon his gallant crest. 
He look'd upon his people. 

And a tear was in his eye ; 
He look'd upon the traitors. 

And his glance was stern and high. 
Right graciously he smiled on us, 

As roll'd from wing to wing, 
Down all our line, in deafening shout, 

" God save our lord, the king." 
" And if my standard-bearer fall. 

As fall full well he may — 
For never saw I promise yet 

Of such a bloody fray — 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 



351 



Press where ye see my white plume shine, 

Amidst the ranks of war, 
And be your oriflamme, to-day. 

The helmet of Navarre." 

Hurrah ! the foes are moving ! 

Hark to the mingled din 
Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, 

And roaring culverin ! 
The fiery Duke is pricking fast 

Across Saint Andre's plain, 
With all the hireling chivalry 

Of Guelders and Almayne. 
Now by the lips of those ye love, 

Fair gentlemen of France, 
Charge for the golden lilies now. 

Upon them with the lance ! 
A thousand spurs are striking deep, 

A thousand spears in rest, 
A thousand knights are pressing close 

Behind the snow-white crest ; 
And in they burst, and on they rusli'd, 

While, like a guiding star. 
Amidst the thickest carnage blazed 

The helmet of Navarre. 

Now, God be praised, the day is ours ! 

Mayenne hath turn'd his rein. 
D'Aumale hath cried for quarter, — 

The Flemish Count is slain. 
Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds 

Before a Biscay gale ; 
The field is heap'd with bleeding steeds, 

And flags, and cloven mail ; 
And then we thought on vengeance, 

And all along our van, 
" Remember St. Bartholomew," 

Was pass'd from man to man ; 
But out spake gentle Henry, 

" No Frenchman is my foe ; 
Down, down with every foreigner; 

But let your brethren go." 
Oh ! was there ever such a knight, 

In friendship or in war, 
As our sovereign lord, King Henry, 

The soldier of Navarre ! 

Ho ! maidens of Vienne ! 

Ho ! matrons of Lucerne ! 
Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those 

Who never shall return. 
Ho ! Philip, send, for charity, 

Thy Mexican pistoles, 
That Antwerp monks may sing a mass 

For thy poor spearmen's souls ! 
Ho ! gLdlant nobles of the League 

Look that your arms be bright I 
Ho ! burghers of St. Genevieve, 

Keep watch and ward to-night ! 
For our God hath crush'd thy tyrant, 

Our God hath raised tlie slave, 
And mock'd the counsel of the wise 

And the valour of the brave. 
Then glory to his holy name 

Fron'i whom all glories are ; 
And glory to our sovereign lord, 

King Henry of Navarre. 



THE CAVALIER'S MARCH TO LON- 
DON. 

To horse ! to horse ! brave cavaliers ! 

To horse for church and crown ! 
Strike, strike your tents ! snatch up your spears ! 

And ho for London town ! 
The imperial harlot, doom'd a prey 

To our avenging fires. 
Sends up the voice of her dismay 

From all her hundred spires. 

The Strand resounds with maiden's shrieks, 

The 'Change with merchants' sighs, 
And blushes stand on brazen cheeks. 

And tears in iron eyes ; 
And, pale with fasting and with fright, 

Each Puritan committee 
Hath summon'd forth to prayer and fight 

The Roundheads of the city. 

And soon shall London's sentries hear 

The thunder of our drum, 
And London's dames, in wilder fear. 

Shall cry. Alack ! They come ! 
Fling the fascines ; — tear up the spikes ; 

And forward, one and all. 
Down, down with all their train-band pikes, 

Down with their mud-built wall. 

Quarter ? — Foul fall your whining noise, 

Ye recreant spawn of fraud ! 
No quarter ! Think on Strafford, boys. 

No quarter ! Think on Laud. 
What ho ! The craven slaves retire. 

On ! Trample them to mud. 
No quarter ! Charge. — No quarter ! Fire. 

No quarter ! Blood ! blood ! blood ! — 

Where nextl In sooth there lacks no witch, 

Brave lads, to tell us where. 
Sure London's sons be passing rich. 

Her daughters wondrous fair : 
And let that dastard be the theme 

Of many a board's derision. 
Who quails for sermon, cuff, or scream 

Of any sweet precisian. 

Their lean divines, of solemn brow. 

Sworn foes to throne and steeple, 
From an unwonted pulpit now 

Shall edify the people : 
Till the tired hangman, in despair, 

Shall curse his blunted shears, 
And vainly pinch, and scrape, and tear. 

Around their leathern ears. 

We'll hang, above his own Guildhall, 

The city's grave Recorder, 
Mnd on the den of thieves we'll fall. 

Though Pym should speak to order. 
In vain the lank-hair'd gang shall try 

To cheat our martial law ; 
In vain shall Lcnthill trembling cry 

That strangers must withdraw. 



352 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 



Of bench and woolsack, tub and chair, 

We'll build a glorious pyre, 
And tons of rebel parchment there 

Shall crackle in the fire. 
With them shall perish, cheek by jowl, 

Petition, psalm, and libel. 
The colonel's canting muster-roll, 

The chaplain's dog-ear'd Bible. 

We'll tread a measure round the blaze 

Where England's pest expires, 
And lead along the dance's maze 

The beauties of the friars : 
Then smiles in every face shall shine, 

And joy in every soul. 
Bring forth, bring forth the oldest wine, 

And crown the largest bowl. 

And as with nod and laugh ye sip 

The goblet's rich carnation. 
Whose bursting bubbles seem to tip 

The wink of invitation ; 
Drink to those names, — those glorious names,- 

Those names no time shall sever, — 
Drink, in a draught as deep as Thames, 

Our church and king for ever ! 



THE SPANISH ARMADA. 

Attend all ye who list to hear 

Our noble England's praise ! 
I tell of the thrice famous deeds 

She wrought in ancient days. 
When that great fleet invincible 

Against her bore in vain. 
The richest spoils of Mexico, 

The stoutest hearts of Spain. 

It was about the lovely close 

Of a warm summer day. 
There came a gallant merchant-ship 

Full sail to Plymouth Bay ; 
Her crew had seen Castile's black fleet 

Beyond Aurigny's Isle, 
At earliest twilight, on the waves, 

Lie heaving many a mile ; 
At sunrise she escaped their van. 

By God's especial grace ; 
And the tall Pinta, till the noon, 

Had held her close in chase. 
Forthwith a guard at every gun 

Was placed along the wall ; 
The beacon blazed upon the roof 

Of Edgecombe's lofty hall. 
And many a fishing-bark put out, 

To pry along the coast, 
And with loose rein and bloody spur, 

Rode inland many a post. 

With his white hair unbonneted. 
The stout old Sheriff comes ; 

Behind him march the halberdiers, 
Before him sound the drums ; 



His yeomen round the market-cross 

Make clear an ample space. 
For there behoves him to set up 

The standard of her grace. 
And haughtily the trumpets peal, 

And gayly dance the bells. 
As slow upon the labouring wind' 

The royal blazon swells. 
Look how the lion of the seas 

Lifts up his ancient crown, 
And underneath his deadly paw 

Treads the gay lilies down ! 
So stalk'd he when he turn'd to flight, 

On that famed Picard field, 
Bohemia's plume, Genoa's bow. 

And CfEsar's eagle shield ; 
So glared he when at Agincourt 

In wrath he turn'd to bay. 
And crush'd and torn beneath his claws 

The princely hunters lay. 
Ho! strike the flag-slaft'deep, Sir Knight, — 

Ho ! scatter flowers, fair maids — 
Ho ! gunners, fire a loud salute — 

Ho ! gallants, draw your blades ; 
Thou sun, shine on her joyously ; 

Ye breezes, waft her wide ; 
Our glorious Semper cadem — 

The banner of our pride. 

The freshening breeze of eve unfurl'd 

That banner's massy fold — 
The parting gleam of sunshine kiss'd 

That haughty scroll of gold ; 
Night sank upon the dusky beach, 

And on the purple sea — 
Such night in England ne'er had been. 

Nor e'er again shall be. 
From Eddystone to Berwick bounds. 

From Lynn to Milford Bay, 
That time of slumber was as bright 

And busy as the day ; 
For swift to east and swift to west. 

The warning radiance spread — 
High on St. Michael's Mount it shone — 

It shone on Beachy Head. 
Far on the deep the Spaniard saw. 

Along each southern shire, 
Cape beyond cape, in endless range, 

Those twinkling points of fire ; 
The fisher left his skiff" to rock 

On Tamar's glittering waves. 
The rugged miners pour'd to war 

From Mendip's sunless caves. 
O'er Longleat's towers, o'er Cranbourne's oaks, 

The fiery herald flew ; 
He roused the shepherds of Stonehenge, 

The rangers of Beaulieu. 

Right sharp and quick the bells all night 

Rang out from Bristol town. 
And ere the day three hundred horse 

Had met on Clifton down ; 
The sentinel on Whitehall Gate 

liOok'd forth into the night. 
And saw o'erhanging Richmond Hill 

The streak of blood-red light. 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 



353 



Then bugle's note and cannon's roar 

The death-like silence broke, 
And with one start, and with one cry, 

The royal city woke. 
At once on all her stately gates 

Arose the answering fires ; 
At once the wild alarum clash'd 

From all her reeling spires ; 
From all the batteries of the Tower, 

Peal'd loud the voice of fear ; 
And all the thousand masts of Thames 

Sent back a louder cheer; 
And from the farthest wards was heard 

The rush of hurrying feet. 
And the broad streams of flags and pikes 

Dash'd down each roaring street ; 
And broader still became the blaze, 

And louder still the din. 
As fast from every village round 

The horse came spurring in : 
And eastward straight, from wild Blackheath, 

The warlike errand went, 
And roused in many an ancient hall, 

The gallant 'squires of Kent. 
Southward from Surrey's pleasant hills. 

Flew those bright couriers forth ; 
High on bleak Hempstead's swarthy moor. 

They started for the north ; 
And on, and on, without a pause, 

Untired they bounded still ; 
All night from tower to tower they sprang — 

They sprang from hill to hill. 
Till the proud Peak iinfurl'd the flag 

O'er Darwin's rocky dales — 
Till like volcanoes flared to heaven, 

The stormy hills of Wales — 
Till twelve fair counties saw the blaze 

On Malvern's lonely height. 
Till stream'd in crimson on the wind 

The Wrekin's crest of light — 
Till broad and fierce the star came forth 

On Ely's stately fane, 
And tower and hamlet rose in arms 

O'er all the boundless plain — 
Till Belvoir's lordly terraces 

The sign to Lincoln sent,' 
And Lincoln sped the message on, 

O'er the wide vale of Trent — 
Till Skiddaw saw the fire that burn'd 

On Gaunt's embattled pile, 
And the red glare on Skiddaw roused 

The burghers of Carlisle ! 



45 



A SONG OF THE HUGUENOTS. 

On ! weep for Moncontoiir. 

Oh ! weep for the hour 
When the children of darkness 

And evil had power ; 
When the horsemen of Valois 

Triunifihantly trod 
On the bosoms that bled 

For their rights and their God. 

Oh ! weep for Moncontour. 

Oh weep for the slain 
Who for faith and for freedom 

Lay slaughter'd in vain. 
Oh ! weep for the living, 

Who linger to bear 
The renegade's shame, 

Or the exile's despair. 

One look, one last look. 

To the cots and the tov^-ers. 
To the rows of our vines, 

And the beds of our flowers. 
To the church where the bones 

Of our fathers decay'd. 
Where we fondly had deem'd 

That our own should be laid. 

Alas! we must leave thee, 

Dear desolate home, 
To the spearmen of Uri, 

The shavelings of Rome, 
To the serpent of Florence, 

The vulture of Spain, 
To the pride of Anjou, 

And the guile of Lorraine. 

Farewell to thy fountain. 

Farewell to thy shades. 
To the song of thy youths, 

And the dance of thy maids. 
To the breath of thy garden. 

The hum of thy bees, 
And the long waving line 

Of the blue Pyrenees. 

Farewell, and for ever. 

The priest and the slave 
May rule in the halls 

Of the free and the brave ; — 
Our hearths we ai)andon ; — 

Our lands we resign ; 
But, Father, we kneel 

To no altar but thine. 



2a3 



D. M. MOIR. 



Mr. Moir was born about the beg-inning of 
the present century. He is a physician, and 
resides at Musselburgh, near Edinburgh. 
Under the signature of Delta, he has been 
for many years one of the principal poetical 
contributors to Blackwood's Magazine; and 
he has published, besides one or two volumes 
of poems. Outlines of the Ancient History of 



Medicine, The Autobiography of Mansie 
Waugh, A Memoir of John Gait, and other 
works in prose. In his poems he alludes to 
frequent domestic misfortunes. Casa's Dirge, 
Wee Willie, and other pieces, breathe a pure 
and simple pathos, and his writings, gene- 
rally, are characterized by much delicacy 
and grace. 



A LOVER TO HIS BETROTHED. 

Su:<nvrER was on the hills when last we parted. 

Flowers in the vale, and beauty on the sky; 
Our hearts were true, although our hopes were 
thwarted ; 

Forward, with wistful eye, [sweet 

Scarce half-resign'd we look'd. yet thought how 
'Twould be again in after montlis to meet. 
And months have pass'd : now the bright moon is 
shining 

O'er the gray mountains and the stilly sea, 
As, hy the streamlet's willowy bend reclining, 

I pause remembering thee, 
Wlio to the moonlight lent a softer charm 
As through these wilds we wandered arm in arm. 

Yes! as we roam'd the sylvan earth seem'd glowing 

With many a beauty unremark'd before: 
The soul was like a deep urn overflowing 

With thoughts, a treasured store ; 
The very flowers seem'd born but to exhale, 
As breath'd the West, their fragrance to the gale. 
Mcthinks I see thee yet — thy form of lightness, 

An angfil phantom gliding through the trees, 
Thine alabaster brow, thy check of brightness. 

Thy tresses in the breeze 
Floating their auburn, and thine eyes that made, 
So rich their blue, heaven's azure like a shade. 

Methinks even yet I feel thj' timid fingers, 

With their bland pressure thrilling bUss to mine; 
Methinks yet on my cheek thy breathing lingers 

As, fondly leant to thine, 
I told how life all pleasureless would be, 
Green palm-tree of earth's desert! wanting thee. 
Not yet, not yet had disappointment shrouded 

Youth's summer calm with storms of wintry strife; 
The star of Hope shone o'er our path unclouded, 

And Fancy colour'd life 
With those elysian rainbow-hues, which Truth 
Melts with his rod, when disenchanting youth. 

Where art thou now 1 I look around, but see not 
The features and the form that haunt my dreams ! 

Where art thou now 1 I listen, but for me, not 
The deep rich music streams 
35 1 



Of that entrancing voice, which could bestow 

A zest to pleasure, and a balm to wo : — 

I miss thy smile, when morn's first light is bursting 

Through the green branches of the casement tree ; 
To list thy voice my lonely ear is thirsting, 

Beside the moonlit sea : 
Vain are my longings, my repinings vain ; 
Sleep only gives thee to my arms again. 

Yet should it cheer me, that nor wo hath shatter'd 

The ties that link our hearts, nor Hate, nor Wrath, 
And soon the day^nay dawn, when shall be scatter'd 

All shadows from our path ; 
And visions be fulfill'd, by Hope adored, 
In thee, the long-lost, to mine arms restored. 
Ah ! could I see thee ! — see thee, were it only 

But for a moment looking bliss to me ! 
Ah ! could I hear thee ! — desolate and lonely 

Is life deprived of thee : 
I start from out my revery, to know 
That hills between us rise, and rivers flow ! 

Let Fortune change — be fickle Fate preparing 

To shower her an'ov^'s, or to shed her balm, 
All that I ask for, pray for, is the sharing 

With thee life's storm or calm; 
For, ah ! with others' wealth and mirth would be 
Less sweet by for than sorrow shared with thee ! 
Yes ! vainly, foolishly, the vulgar reckon 

That barppiness resides in outward shows : 
Contentment from the lowliest cot may beckon 

True Love to sweet repose : 
For genuine bliss can ne'er be far apart. 
When soul meets soul, and heart responds to heart. 

Farewell ! let tyrannous Time roll on, estranging 

The eyes and heart from each familiar spot: 
Be fickle friendships with the seasons changing, 

So that thou changest not ! 
I would not that the love which owes its birth 
To heaven, should perish, like the things of earth ! 
Adieu ! as falls the flooding moonlight round me. 

Fall Heaven's best joj-s on thy beloved head ! 
May cares that harass, and may griefs that wound me, 

Flee from thy path and bed ! 
Be every thought that stirs and hour that flies. 
Sweet as thy smile, and radiant as thine eyes! 



D. M. MOIR. 



355 



WEE WILLIE. 

Fatie-thek-well, our last anJ fairest, 

Dear wee Willie, fare-tliee-well ! 
He, who lent thee, hath recall'd thee 

Back with hitn and his to dwell. 
Fifteen moons their silver lustre 

Orily o'er thy brow had shed, 
When thy spirit join'd the seraphs, 

And thy dust the dead. 

Like a sunbeam, through our dwelling 

Shone thy presence brij^ht and calm ! 
Thou didst add a zest of pleasure; 

To our sorrows thou wert balm ; — 
Brighter beam'd thine eyes than sutnracr; 

And thy first attempt at speech 
Thrill'd our heart-strinsjs with a rapture 

Music ne'er could reach. 

As we gazed upon thee sleeping, 

With thy line fair locks outspread, 
Thou didst seem a iittla an(Tcl, 

Who from heaven to earth had stray'd ; 
And, entranced, we watch'd the vision. 

Half in hope and half affright, 
Lest what we deem'd ours, and earthly, 

Should dissolve in light. 

Snows o'ermantled hill and valley, 

Sullen clouds begrim'd the sky. 
When the first, drear do'ibt oppress'd us, 

That our child was doom'd to die ! 
Through ea'-h long night-watch, the taper 

Show'd the hectic of thy cheek; 
And each anxious dawn beheld thee 

More worn out, and weak. 

'Twas even then Destruction's angel 

Shook his pinions o'er our path, 
Seized the rosiest of our household, 

And struck Charlie down in death — 
Fearful, awful. Desolation 

On our lintel set his sign ; 
And we turn'd from his sad death-bed 

Willie, round to thine ! 

As the beams of Spring's first morning 

Through the silent chamber play'd, 
Lifeless, in mine arms I raised thee. 

And in thy small coffin laid ; 
Ere the day-star with the darkness 

Nine times had triumphant striven, 
In one grave had met your ashes. 

And your souls in Heaven ! 

Five were ye, the beauteous blossoms 

Of our hopes, and hearts, and hearth ; 
Two asleep lie buried under — 

Three for us yet gladden earth : 
Thee, our hyacinth, gay Charlie, 

Willie, thee our snow-drop pure. 
Back to us shall second spring-time 

Never more allure ! 

Vet while thinking, oh ! our lost ones ! 
Of how dear ye were to us, 



Why should dreams of doubt and darkness 
Haunt our troubled spirits thus? 

Why, across the cold dirh churchyard 
Flit our visions of despair? 

Seated on the tomb, Faith's angel 
Says, "Ye are not there !" 

Where then are ye 1 With the Saviour 

Blest, for ever blest, are ye. 
Mid the sinless, little children. 

Who have heard his " Come to me !" 
'Yond the shades of death's dark valley. 

Now ye lean upon his breast. 
Where the wicked dare not enter, 

And the weary rest ! 

We are wicked — we are weary — 

For us pray, and for us plead ; 
God, who ever hears the sinless, 

May through you the sinful heed ; 
Pray that, through Christ's mediation, 

All our faults may be forgiven ; 
Plead that ye be sent to greet us 

At the gates of Heaven ! 



MIDNIGHT. 

'Tis night, and in darkness; — the visions of youth 

Flit solemn and slow in the eye of the mind ; 
The hopes that excited have perish'd ; — and truth 

Laments o'er the wreck they are leaving behind. 
'Tis midnight; — and wide o'er the regions of riot 

Are spread, deep in silence, the wings of repose; 
And man, sooth'd from revel and lull'd into quiet, 

Forgets in his slumber the weight of his woes. 
How gloomy and dim is the scowl of the heaven. 

Whose azure the clouds with their darkness invest: 
Not a star o'er the shadowy concave is given. 

To omen a something like hope in the breast. 
Hark! how the lone night-wind up-tosses the forest; 

A downcast regret through thcmind slowly steals; 
But ah ! 'tis the tempests of Fortune, that sorest 

The desolate heart in its loneliness feels. 
Where, where arc the spirits in whom was my trust; 

WHiosebosoms with mutual affection would burn"? 
Alas! they are gone to their homes in the dust; 

The grass rustles drearily over their urn : 
Whilst I, in a populous solitude languish. 

Mid foes who beset me, and friends who are cold : 
Yes, — the pilgrim of earth oft has felt in his an- 
guish 

That the heart may be widow'd before it be old! 
Affection can soothe but its vot'rics an hour, — 

Doom'd soon in the flames that it raised to de- 
part; 
But oh ! Disappointment has poison and power 

To ruffle and fret the most patient of heart ! 
How oft 'ncath the dark-pointed arrows of malice 

Hath merit been destined to bear and to bleed ; 
And they who of pleasure have emptied the chalice, 

Can tell that the dregs arc full bitter indeed! 
Let the storms of adversity lower, — 'tis in vain, 

Though friendsshould forsake me andfoes should 
condemn ; 



356 



D, M. MOIR. 



These may kinJle the breasts of the weak to com- 
pUiin, 
They only can teach resignation to mine : 
For far o'er the regions of doubt and of dreaming, 

The spirit beholds a less perishing span ; 
And bright throu:;h the tempest the rainbow is 
streaming, — 
The sign of forgiveness from Maker to Man! 



WEEP NOT FOR HER. 

Wkt.p not for her! Iler span was like the sky, 
Whose thousand stars shine beautiful and bright, 

Like flowers that know not what it is to die, 
Like long hnk'd shadeless months of polar light, 

Like music floating o'er a waveless lake. 

While echo answers from the flowery brake, 
Weep not for her ! 

Weep not for her! She died in early youth. 

Ere hope had lost its rich romantic hues, 
When human bosoms seem'd the homes of truth, 
And earth still gleam'd with beauty's radiant 
dews. 
Her summer prime waned not to days that freeze, 
Her tvine of life was not run to the lees : 
Weep not for her ! 

Weep not for her ! By fleet or slow decay 

It never grieved her bosom's core to mark 

The playmates of her childhood wane away. 

Her prospects wither, and her hopes grow dark. 
Translated by her God with spirit sliriven, 
She pass'd, as 'twere on smiles, from earth to 
heaven : 

Weep' not for her ! 

Weep not for her ! It was not hers to fee! 

The miseries that corrode amassing years, 
'Gainst dreams ol' baffled bliss the heart to steel. 

To wander sad down age's vale of tears. 
As whirl the witlier'd leaves from friendship's tree. 
And on earth's wintry wold alone to be : 
Weep not for her ! 

Weep not for her I She is an angel now. 
And treads the sapphire floors of Paradise, 

All darkness wiped from her refulgent brow, 
Sin, sorrow, suffering, banish'd from her eyes ; 

Victorious over death, to her appears 

The vista'd joys of heaven's eternal years : 
Weep not for her ! 

Weep not for her ! Her memory is the shrine 
Of pleasant thoughts, soft as the scent of flowers. 

Calm as on windless eve the sun's decline. 
Sweet as the song of birds among the bowers. 

Rich as a rainbow with its hues of light, 

Pure as the moonshine of an autumn night: 
Weep not for her ! 

Weep not for her ! There is no cause of wo, 
But rather nerve the spirit that it walk 

Unshrinking o"er the thorny path below. 

And from earth's low defilements keep thee back; 

So, when a few fleet swerving years have flown. 

She'll meet thee at heaven's gate — and lead thee on: 
Weep not for her ! 



FLODDEN FIELD. 

'TwAS on a sultry summer noon. 

The sky was blue, the breeze was still. 

And Nature with the robes of June 

Had clothed the slopes of Floddcn Hill, — 

As rode we slowly o'er the plain. 

Mid wayside flowers and sprouting grain ; 

The leaves on every bough seem'd sleeping, 
And wild bees murmar'd in their mirth, 
So pleasantly, it seem'd as earth 

A jubilee was keeping ! 

And canst thou be, unto my soul 

I said, that dread Northumbrian field, 

Where war's terrific thunder roll 

Above two banded kingdoms peal'd ? 

From out the forest of his spears 

Ardent imagination hears 

The crash of Surrey's onward charging; 
M'hile curtel-axe and broad-sword gleam 
Opposed, a bright, wide, coming stream, 

Like Solway's tide enlarging. 

Hark to the turmoil and the shout. 

The war-cry, and the cannon's boom ! 

Behold the struggle and the rout. 

The broken lance and draggled plume! 

Borne to the earth, with deadly force. 

Comes down the horseman and his horse; 

Round boils the battle like an ocean, 

While stripling blithe and veteran stern 
Pour forth their life-blood on the fern. 

Amid its fierce commotion ! 

Mown down like swathes of summer flowers, 

Yes! on the cold earth there they lie, 
The lords of Scotland's banner'd towers, 

The chosen of her chivalry ! 
Commingled with the vulgar dead. 
Perhaps lies many a mitred head ; 
And thou, the vansjuard onwards leading. 

Who left the sceptre for the sword, 

For battle-lield the festal board, 
Liest low amid the bleeding ! 

Yes ! here thy life-star knew decline. 

Though hope, that strove to be deceived, 

Shaped thy lone course to Palestine, 
And what it wish'd full oft believed: — 

An unhewn pillar on the plain 

Marks out the spot where thou wast slain ; 

There pondering as I stood, and gazing 
On its gray top, the linnet sang. 
And, o'er the slopes where conflict rang, 

The quiet sheep were grazing. 

And were the nameless dead unsung, 
The patriot and the peasant train. 

Who like a phalanx round thee clung. 
To find but death on Flodden Plain ? 

No ! many a mother's melting lay 

Monrn'd o'er the bright flowers luede away ; 

And many a maid, with tears of sorrow, 
Whose locks no more were seen to wave, 
Wept for the beauteous and the brave, 

Who came not on the morrow ! 



EDWARD MOXON. 



This modern classic bookseller is a worthy 
St. Peter, holding the keys to the Heaven 
of Poetry. By his enterprise and liberality 
he has brought Beaumont and Fletcher, 
Ben Jonson, Massinger and Wycherley to 
the table and shelf of the poor scholar, a be- 
nevolent work for which the lovers of wit, 
sentiment, and verse, the friends of all true 
humanities, "rise up and call him blessed." 
Mr. MoxoN is the publisher of Rogers, 
Wordsworth, Campbell, Talfourd, Ten- 
nyson, Hunt, and Browning. He was the 
friend of Lamb when living, — " closer than a 
brother," — and death has not ended the sweet 
labours of friendship. The numerous editions 



of " Elia" are frankincense laid on the tomb 
of a noble spirit. Mr. Moxon, too, has suffered 
a prosecution for the publication of Shelley, 
and been vindicated in England by the elo- 
quence of Talfourd ; though he has needed no 
vindication, for his motives are here above the 
reach of his assailant. If pure sentiment and 
the cultivation of the heart's best affections 
needed any introduction to the soul of the 
reader, they would have it here in Mr. Mox- 
on, the friend of the Muses and their sons. 
But Mr. MoxoN on the score of his own 
merits may stand " unbonnetted" among his 
brethren. We quote from the edition of his 
poems published in 1843. 



TO THE MUSE. 

Fairkst of virgins, daughter of a God, 
That dwcllest where man never trod, 
Yet unto him such joy dost give, 

That througli thy aid he still in paradise may live ! 

Immortal Muse, thy glorious praise to sing, 
Could I a thousand voices bring. 
They were too few. Who like to thee 

Can captivate the heart whose soul is melody 1 

Early thou lead'st me to some gentle hill. 
And wakest for me the holy thrill 
Of birds that greet the welcome morn. 

Rejoicing on wild wing, through fields of ether borne. 

Thou paint' st the landscape which I then survey, 
Peifumest with odours sweet my way, 
Till I forget this world of wo. 

And journey through a land where peerless plea- 
sures flow. 

At noon thou bid'st descend a golden shower; 
To dream of tliee I seek the bower, 
And, like a prince of Inde, the shade 

Enjoy, by thy blest presence more voluptuous made. 

At eve, when twilight like a nun is seen, 
Pacing the grove with pensive mien, 
'Tis then thou comest with most delight; 

No hour can he compared with thine 'twixt day 
. and night. 

'Tis, as it fadeth, like the farewell smile, 
Whii'h settles on the lips awhile 
Of those w'e love, ere they in death 

Resign to heaven their souls, to us their latest breath. 



Thou makest the lone Philomel to sing, 

Createst a pei-petual spring ; 

Bid'st Memory wake 'neath yonder walls. 
O'er which the tint of eve in solemn grandeur falls. 

The heavens thou makest cloudless and serene, 
And of the moon a huntress queen; 
To every star thou givest a spirit, — 

In yonder Shakspeare dwells, that Milton doth 
inherit. 

The goodly of old time thou briug'st to view, 
And with ancestral pomp canst strew 
The unromantic smooth-paced ways 

Of these our philosophic but degenerate days. 

The flower of chivalry before me stand. 
Clad in bright steel, a warlike band ; 
Among them some who served the Muse, 

And at their head the man whom she could naught 
refuse.* 

Old bards are there ! mine eyes in reverence fall 
Before their presence, 'neath whose thrall 
My young life one sweet dream hath been, 

Dwelling on earth in joys ideal and unseen. 

Thou makest the precious tear to gush from eyes, 
Strangers to nature's sympathies ; 
Tyrant and slave alike to thee 

Have knelt, and solace found in dire adversity. 

Through thee the lover sees with frantic pride 
His mistress fairer than Troy's bride ; 
Through the sweet magic of thy art 

He glories in his wounds, and hugs the envenom'd 
dart. 



Sir Pliilip Sidney. 



358 



EDWARD MOXON. 



Her face thou makest a heaven, and her eyes 
The glory of those cloudless skies ; 
They are the planets 'neath whose sway 

The willing lover bends on his celestial way. 

Thou cheer'st the prisoner in his lonely cell, 
The broken spirit knows thee well ; 
A troop of angels come with thee, 

Wisdom, and Hope, calm Thought, and blest Tran- 
quillity., 

Anibition blighted seeks thee, and the shade; 
Remembrance thee her voice hath made, 
At whose sweet call, as to some tale, [to sail. 

We, listening, turn our bark 'mong pleasures past 

Thou spread'st the canvass, and with gentlest winds 
Impell'st the vessel, till she finds 
Some genial spot, where bends the yew, 

Or cypress waves o'er friends who long have bid 
adieu. 

Thou sooth'st the weary and uplift'st the low ; 
The voice of God thou wert below : 
The holy prophets spake through thee, [tree. 

And wept to see their harps hang mute on willow- 

Where now had been the warlike of old Troy, 
Whom Time nor tyrants can destroy, 
If the bold Muse had never lent 

Her aid to sing her chiefs brave, wise, or eloquent 1 

W^ho, when the patriot falls 'neath ruthless power, 
Revives for aye the genial shower ; 
Whose moisture, like the morning's dews. 

Keeps fresh the flower of fame — Who but the 
heavenly Muse? 

Thou art the eye of pity, that surveys 

Man wandering through life's mystic ways; 
His various changes are thy theme, 

His loves, his laughs, his tears: like him, thou art 
a dream. 

Forgive, blest Muse, my want of skill to sing 
Thy wonderous praise. Oh round me fling 
The mantle of sweet thought ; and strew. 

As erst, with flowers, the path I pensive still pursue. 



LOVE. 



Thkre is a flower that never changeth hue; 

In vain the angry winds its leaves assail; 

Triumphant over time, in every vale 
It lifts its hopeful head, glistering with dew. 
The maiden rears it in her own sweet looks; 

The youth conjures it in the summer shade, 
Pictures its image, as by murmuring brooks 

He flies from scenes that his chaste dreams invade. 
The very fields its presence own in spring ; 

The hills re-echo with a song of gladness ; 
The heavens themselves their store of tribute bring. 

And in this flower all things renounce their 
sadness. 
O Love ! where is tlie heart that knows not thee ? 
Thou only bloomest everlastingly ! 



A DREAM. 

Methought my love was dead. Oh, 'twas a night 
Of dreary weeping, and of bitter wo ! 
Methought I saw her lovely spirit go 

With lingering looks into yen star so bright. 

Which then assumed such a beauteous light, 
That all the fires in heaven compared with this 

Were scarce perceptible to my weak sight. 

There scem'd henceforth the haven of my bliss ; 

To that I turn'd with fervency of soul. 

And pray'd that morn might never break again, 
13 ut o'er me that pure planet still remain. 

Alas ! o'er it my vows had no control. 

The lone star set: I woke full glad, I deem, 
To find my sorrow but a lover's dream. 

LIFE. 

Ah ! what is life ! a dream within a dream; 

A pilgrimage from peril rarely free ; 

A bark that sails upon a changing sea, 
Now sunshine and now storm; a mountain stream, 

Heard, but scarce seen ere to the dark deep gone ; 
A wild star blazing with unsteady beam, 

Yet for a season fair to look upon. 
Life is an infant on alTection's knee, 
A youth nov.- full of hope and transient glee. 

In manhood's peerless noon now bright, anon, 
A time-worn ruin silver'd o'er with years. 

I^ife is a race where slippery steeps arise, 

Where discontent and sorrow are the prize. 
And when the goal is won the grave appears. 



WALTON. 

WALT0?f ! when, weary of the world, I turn 
My pensive soul to thee, I soothing find 
The meekness of thy plain contented mind 
Act like some healing charm. From thee I learn 
To sympathize with nature, nor repine 

At fortune, who, though lavish of her store. 
Too often leaves her favourites richly poor. 
Wanting both health and energy divine 
Life's blessings to enjoy. Methinks even now 
I hear thee 'neath the milU-white scented thorn 
Communing with thy pupil, as the morn 
Her rosy cheek displays, — while streams that flow. 
And all that gambol near their rippling source, 
Enchanted listen to thj^ sweet discourse. 



SCENES OF CHILDHOOD. 

Axn do I then behold again the scene, 

Where once I sported when a wanton child ; 

The mead, the church, the streamlet running wild, 
With here and there a fairy spot between, 
Smiling, as there rude storm had never been] 

Alas ! how changed are we who once did tove, 
Calder, thy then enchanted banks along; 

Retiring now to the sequester'd grove, 
Now cheerful hearkening to the accustom'd song 
That rose at eventide these vales among! [wear; 

The charm and hope of youth the green leaves 
'Tis only man that ]>lossoms and decays, 
To know no second spring. I thoughtful gaze 

With dream of years long past, and drop a tear. 



EDWARD MOXON. 



359 



SIDNEY. 

SiDXKT, thou star of beaming chivalry, 

That rose and set 'mid valour's peerless day ; 
Eich ornament of knighthood's milky-way ; 
How much our youth of England owe to thee, 
Thou model of high learning and meek grace, 
That realized an image which did lind 
No place before, save in the inventive mind 
Of hoping man. In thee we proudly trace 
All that revered Antiquity can show 
Of acts heroic that adorn her page. 
Blending with virtues of a purer age. 
Upon thy tomb engrafted spirits grow. 

Where sit the warbling sisters who attend 
The shade made sacred to the Muses' friend. 



SOLACE DERIVED FROM BOOKS. 

Hence care, and let me steep my drooping s))irit 
In streams of poesy, or let me steer 
Imagination's bark 'mong bright scenes, where 

Mortals immortal fairy-land inherit. 

Ah me ! that there should be so few to merit 
The realized hope of him. who deems 
In his youth's spring that life is what it seems, 

Till sorrows pierce his soul, and storms deter it 

From resting there as erst ! Ye visions fair. 
Of Genius born, to you I turn, and flee 
Far from this world's ungenial apathy ; 

Too blest, if hut awhile I captive share 

The presence of such beings as engage [less page. 
The heart, and burn through Shakspeare's matcli- 



TO A BIRD. 

SwKET captive, thou a lesson me hast taught 
Excelling any which the schools convey ; 
Example before precept men obey. 

Methinks already I have haply caught 

A portion of thy joy. Contentment rare, 
For one in dull abode like thine, I trace. 
Blended with warblings of such cheerful grace; 

And yet vs'ithout-a listening ear to share. 

Save mine, thy melody. Thus all day long, 
Even as the youthful bard that meditates 
In scenes the visionary miiid creates, 

Thou to some woodlan,' image tunest thy song; 
A prisoner too to hope, like him, sweet bird. 

In lonely cell thou sing'st, and sing'st unheard. 



A MOTHER SINGING. 

Hauk, 'tis a mother singing to her child 

Those madrigals that used htr ears to greet, 
When she, an infant like that spring-llower sweet. 

Lent her charm'd ears to nurse, or mother mild. 

That sang those nursery stories strange and wild — 
Of knights, of robbers, and of Fairy queens 
Dwelling in castles mid enchanted scenes— 

The songs which plain antiquity beguiled. 

Or is her theme of him, her lord, whose hark 
Is ploughing, 'neath his guidance, Indi:m seas ; 
Or far detain'd by polar skies, that freeze 

His glad return ? Slie, tuneful as the lark [smile. 
That warbling soars, though Phfebiis cease to 

Lifts her soft voice, and sings, though sad the while. 



POESY. 

Di VI NEST Poesy ! without thy wings 

Life were a burden, and not worth receiving ; 
Youth fadeth like a dream, care keeps us grieving, 

Early we sicken at all pleasure brings. 

Thou only art the ever genial maid, 

That strew'st with flowers the winter of our way ; 

Companion meet in city or in shade. 

Magician sweet whose wand all things obey ; 

Thou peoplest with divinities the grove, 
Picturest old times, and with creative skill, 
Mould'st men and manners to thy heavenly will. 

Mistress of sympathy and winning love. 

Oh be thou ever with me, with me — wholly, 

To aiuile when I am gay, to sigh when melancholy. 

TO 

And what was Stella but a haughty darnel 
Or Geraldine, whom noble Surrey sought ! 
Or Sacharissa, she who proudly taught 

The courtly Waller statelier verse to frame T 
Or Beatrice, whom Dante deified 7 

Or she of whom all Italy once rung, 
Com[)ared with thee, who art our age's pride. 

And the sweet theme of many a poet's tongue 1 
There is a nobleness that dwells within. 

Fairer b}' far than any outward feature ; 
A grace, a wit to gentleness akin. 

That would subdue the most unloving creature. 
These beauties rare are thine, most matchless maid. 
Compared with which,theirs were bulbeauly's shade. 



ROQEN. 



Bhight was the moon as from thy gates I went. 
Majestic Rouen ! and the silver Seine 
Dimpled with joy, as murmuring to the main, 

A pilgrim like myself, her course she bent. 

Thou art a city beautiful to see. 

Surpassing in magnificence that seat 
Of kings, the capital, the gaj' retreat 

Of which "all Europe rings!" Full oft of thee 

Will he my future dreams ; when far away, 
I still shall mingle with thy ancient throng; 
Shall pace thy marble halls, and gaze among 

The Gothic splendours of thy once bright day. 
When the first Francis was thy guest, and thou 
Thyself didst wear a crown upon thy brow ! 

PIETY. 

Mf.THOVGHT I heard a voice upon me call, 
As listless in desponding mood I lay, 
Whiling the melancholy hour away. 

Mid fears that did my fondest hopes enthral. 

'Twas not the trumpet voice of fame I heard. 
Nor fortune's, nurse of impotence and care; 
Nor yet the moanings deep of fell despair. 

But oh ! it was the voice of one that stirr'd 

In every leaf! Sweet, sw^eet the accents came, 
And stole in pure aflVction to my heart. 
Healing within wounds bleeding'neath the smart 

Of bitterest wo. ITp sprang my gladden'd frame 
Restored, as henceforth brighter days to see; — 
Thy voice it was I heard, meek Piety. 



MRS. NORTON. 



Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton is a 
granddaughter of Kichard Brinsley Sheri- 
dan, and the inheritor of his genius. While 
she was an infant, her father, Thomas Sheri- 
dan, sought the renovation of a shattered con- 
stitution in the tropical seas, but unsuccess- 
fully, for four years after leaving England he 
died at the Cape of Good Hope, whence his 
widow returned home, and, living in seclu- 
sion, devoted herself with untiring assiduity to 
the education of her children, the author of The 
Dream, another daughter, now the Hon. Mrs. 
Blackwood, author of the Irish Emigrant's 
Lament, etc., and a third, now Lady Seymour. 

The eldest two of these sisters exhibited re- 
markable precocity. They rivalled the cele- 
brated Misses Davidson of this country in the 
earliness and perfection of their mental de- 
velopment. At twelve Caroline Sheridan 
wrote verses which even now she would not 
be ashamed to see in print, and at seventeen 
she finished The Sorrows of Rosalie, which 
gave abundant promise of tl:e reputation she 
has since acquired. 

Two years afterward she was married to 
the Hon. George Chapple Norton, a brother 
to Lord Grantley. Mr. Norton proposed for 
Miss Sheridan when she was sixteen ; but 
her mother postponed the contract three years, 
that the daughter might herself be better qua- 
lified to fix her choice. In this period she 
became acquainted with one whose early death 
alone prevented a union more consonant to her 
feelings; and when Mr. Norton renewed his 
proposal he was accepted. The unhappiness 
of this union is too well known to be passed 
over in silence. Ingenuous and earnest as 
the poetical nature invariably is, trustful, ar- 
dent, and reliant upon its own intrinsic worthi- 
ness, it is too often regardless of those con- 
ventional forms which become both a barrier 
and a screen to the less pure in heart. Occu- 
pying the most enviable position in society, 
surpassing most of her sex as much in per- 
sonal beauty as in genius, it were a wonder 
had she escaped the attacks of envy and 
malevolence. While Lord Melbourne was 

prime minister, urged on by the political ene- 
360 



mies of that nobleman, Mr. Norton instituted 
a prosecution on a charge involving her fide- 
lity. All the low arts which well-feed attor- 
neys and a malignant prosecutor could devise 
were put in requisition. Forgery, perjury, 
the searching scrutiny of private papers, the 
exhibition of the most thoughtless and trivial 
incidents and conversations in her history, 
were resorted to. But all were unavailing. 
She parsed the ordeal with her white robes 
unsullied by the slightest stain. An acquittal 
by the jury and the people, however, poorly 
atoned the injustice of the accusation. 

Mrs. Norton has been styled the Byron 
of her sex. Though she resembles that groat 
poet in the energy and mournful ness so often 
pervading her pages, it would be erroneous to 
confound her sorrowful craving for sympathy, 
womanly endurance, resignation, and religious 
trust, with the refined misanthropy of Childe 
Harold. She feels intensely, and utters her 
thoughts with an impassioned energy; but 
they are not the vapourings of a sickly fancy, 
nor the morbid workings of undue self-lo^e; 
they are the strong and healthful action of a 
noble nature abounding in the wealth of its 
aifections, outraged and trampled upon, and 
turning from its idols to God when the altar 
at which it worshipped has been taken away. 

Mrs. Norton now lives in comparative re- 
tirement, admired by the world, and idolized 
" b)!^ the few admitted to her friendship. Be^ 
sides the Sorrows of Rosalie, The Undying 
One, and The Dream, (the last and best of 
her productions.) she has written many shorter 
poems of much beauty, which have probably 
been more widely read than the works of any 
poetess except Mrs. Iiemans. 

The poetry of Mrs. Norton is often distin- 
guished for a masculine energy, and always 
for grace and harmony. She has taste, an 
affluent fancy, and an unusual ease of ex- 
pression. Her principal fault is diffuseness; 
she writes herself through, giving us all the 
progress of her mind and the byplny of her 
thought. Her recent works are, however, 
more compressed and carefully finished than 
those of an earlier date. 



MRS. NORTON. 



361 



DEDICATION OF THE DREAM, 

TO THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND. 

OxcE more, my harp! once more, althoucrli I thought 
Never to wake thy silent strin<^s again, 

A soothing; dream thy gentle chords have wrought. 
And my sad heart, which long hath dwelt in pain, 

Soars, like a wild bird from a cypress hough. 

Into the poet's heaven, and leaves dull grief below ! 

And unto thee — the beautiful and pure — * 
Whose lot is cast amid that busy world 

Where only sluggish Dulness dwells secure, 
And Fancy's generous wing is faintly furl'd ; 

To thee — whose friendship kept its efjiial truth 

Through the most dreary hour of my embitter'd 
youth — 

I dedicate the la)'. Ah ! never bard, 

In days when poverty was twin with song ; 

Nor wandering harper, lonely and ill-starr'd, 
Cheer'd by some castle's chief, and harbour'd long; 

Not Scott's Last Minstrel, in his trembling lays. 

Woke with a warmer heart the earnest meed of 
praise ! 

For easy are the alms the rich man spares 
To sons of Genius, by misfortune hr-nt, 

But thou gav'st me, what woman seldom dares, 
Belief — in spite of many a cold dissent — 

When, slander'd and niiJign'd, I stood apart, 

From those whose bounded power hath wrung, not 
crush'd, my heart. 

Then, then, when cowards lied away my name, 
And scoff'd to sec me feebly stem the tide; 

When some were kind on whom I had no claim, 
And some forsook on whom my love relied. 

And some, who ni'ghf have battled for my sake. 

Stood off in doubt to see what turn " the world" 
would take — 

Thou gavest me that the poor do give the poor, 
Kind words, and holy wishes, and true tears ; 

The laved, the near of kin could do no more. 
Who changed not with the gloom of varying 

But clung the closer when I stood forlorn, [years. 

And blunted slander's dart with their indignant 
scorn. 

For they who credit crime are they who feel 
Their men hearts weak to unresisted sin; 

Mem'ry, not judgment, prompts the thoughts which 
steal 
O'er minds like tijese, an easy fiith to win ; 

And tales of broken truth are still believed 

Most readily by those who have the/nselves deceived. 

But, like a white swan down a troubled stream. 
Whose rufiliiig pinion hath the power to fling 

Aside the turbid drops which darkly gleam 
And mar the freshness of her snowy wing. 

So thou, with queenly grace and gentle pride. 

Along the world's dark waves in purity dost glide; 

Thy pale and pearly cheek was never made 
To crimson with a faint, false-hearted shame ; 

Thou didst not shrink, of bitter tongues afraid. 
Who hunt in packs the object of their blame ; 
46 



To thee the sad denial still held true. 
For from thine own good thoughts thy heart its 
mercy drew. 

And, though my faint and tributary rhymes 
Add nothing to the glory of thy day. 

Yet every poet hopes that after-limes 
Shall set some value on his votive lay, 

And I would fain one gentle deed record 

Among the many such with which thy life is stored. 

So, when these lines, made in a mournful hour, 

. Are idly open'd to the stranger's eye, 

A dream of thee, aroused by Fancy's power, 

Shall be the first to wander floating by ; 
And they who never saw thy lovely face, 
Shall pause, to conjure up a vision of its grace ! 



EXTRACT FROM THE DREAM. 

On, Twilight ! Spirit that does render birth 
To dim enchantments; melting heaven with earth, 
Leaving on craggy hills and running streams 
A softness like the atmosphere of dreams; 
Thy hour to all is welcome ! Faint and svi'cet 
Thy light falls round the peasant's homeward feet, 
Who, slow returning from his task of toil, 
Sees the low sunset gild the cultured soil. 
And, tho' such radiance round him brightly glows, 
Marks the small spark his cottage window throws; 
Still as his heart forestalls liis weary pace, 
Fondly he dreams of each familiar face, 
Recalls the treasures of his narrow life. 
His rosy children and his sunburnt wife, 
To whom his coming is the chief event 
Of simple days in cheerful labour spent. 
The rich man's chariot hath gone whirling past, 
And those poor cottagers have only cast 
One careless glance on all that show of pride. 
Then to their tasks turn'd quietly aside ; 
But him they wait for, him they welcome home. 
Fond sentinels look forth to see him come; 
The fagot sent for when the fire grew dim, 
The frugal meal prepared are all for him; 
For him the watching of that sturdy boy, 
For him those smiles of tenderness and joy. 
For him — who plods his sauntering way along, 
Whistling the fragment of some village song ! 



TO MY BOOKS. 

Stlext companions of the lonely hour. 

Friends, who can never alter or forsake. 
Who for inconstant roving have no power. 

And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take, — 
Let me return to you ; this turmoil ending 

Which worldly cares have in my spirit wrought; 
And, o'er your old familiar pages bending. 

Refresh my mind with many a tramjuil thought, 
Till, haply meeting there, from time to time. 

Fancies, the audible echo of my own, 
'Twill be like hearing in a foreign clime 

My native language spoke in friendly tone. 
And with a sort of welcome I shall dwell 
On these, my umipe musings told so well. 
9 11 



362 



MRS. NORTON. 



TWILIGHT. 

\ 

It is the twilight hour, 

The daylight toil is done, 
And the last rays are departing 

Of the cold and wintry sun. 
It is the time when friendship 

Holds converse fair and free. 
It is the time when children 

Dance round the mother's knee. 
But my soul is faint and heavy. 

With a yearning sad and deep, 
By the fireside lone and dreary 

I sit me down and weep ! 
Where are ye, merry voices, 

Whose clear and bird-like tone, 
Some other ear now blesses. 

Less anxious than my own 1 
Where are ye, steps of lightness, 

Which fell like blossom-showers? 
Where are ye, sounds of laughter, 

That cheer'd the pleasant hours 1 
Through the dim light slow declining, 

Where my wistful glances fall, 
I can see your pictures hanging 

Against the silent wall ; — 
They gleam athwart the darkness. 

With their sweet and changeless eyes, 
But mute are ye, my children ! 

No voice to mine replies. 
Where are yel Are ye playing 

By the stranger's blazing hearth ; 
Forgetting, in your gladness. 

Your old home's former mirth ? 
Are ye dancing ] Are ye singing 1 

Are ye full of childish glee ? 
Or do your light hearts sadden 

With the memory of me 1 
Round whom, oh ! gentle darlings. 

Do your young arms fondly twine. 
Does she press you to her bosom 

Who hath taken you from mine "? 
Oh ! boys, the twilight hour 

Such a heavy time hath grown, — 
It recalls with such deep anguish 

All I used to call my own, — 
That the harshest word that ever 

Was spoken to me there. 
Would be trivial — would be loelcome — 

In this depth of my despair ! 
Yet no ! Despair shall sink not, 

While life and love remain, — 
Though the weary struggle haunt nie, 

And my prayer be made in vain : 
Though at times my spirit fiiil me, 

And the bitter tear-drons fill, 
Though my lot be hard and lonely. 

Yet I hope — I hope through all ! 

When the mournful Jewish mother 
Laid her infant down to rest, 

In doubt, and fear, and sorrow. 
On the water's changeful breast ; 

She knew not what the future 
Should bring the sorely tried : 



That the high priest of her nation 

W^as the babe she sought to hide. 
No ! in terror wildly flying. 

She hurried on her path : 
Her svvoln heart full to bursting 

Of woman's helpless wrath ; 
Of that wrath so blent with anguish, 

When we seek to shield from ill 
Those feeble little creatures 

Who seem more lielpless still ! 
Ah ! no doubt in such an hour 

Her thoughts were harsh and wild ; 
The fiercer burn'd her spirit 

The more she loved her child ; 
No doubt, a frenzied anger 

Was mingled with her fear. 
When that prayer arose for justice 

Which God hath sworn to hear. 
He heard it ! From His heaven. 

In its blue and boundless scope, 
He saw that task of anguish. 

And that fragile ark of hope ; 
When she turn'd from that lost infant 

Her weeping eyes of love. 
And the cold reeds bent beneath it — 

His angels watch'd above ! 
She was spared the bitter sorrow 

Of her young child's early death, 
Or the doubt where he was carried 

To draw his distant breath ; 
She was call'd his life to nourish 

From the well-springs of her heart, 
God's mercy re-uniting 

Those whom man had forced apart ! 

Nor was thij wo forgotten. 

Whose worn and weary feet 
Were driven from thy homestead. 

Through the red sand's parching heat 
Poor Hagar ! scorn'd and banish'd, 

That another's son might be 
Sole claimant on that father. 

Who felt no more for thee. 
Ah ! when thy dark eye wander'd, 

Forlorn Egyptian slave ! 
Across that lurid desert. 

And saw no fountain wave, — 
When thy southern heart, despairing. 

In the passion of its grief. 
Foresaw no ray of comfort. 

No shadow of relief; 
But to cast the young child from thee, 

That thou might'st not see him die. 
How sank thy broken spirit — 

But the Lord of Hosts was nigh ! 
He (He, too oft forgotten. 

In sorrow as in joy) 
Had will'd they should not perish — 

The outcast and her boy : 
The cool breeze swept across them 

From the angel's waving wing, — 
The fresh tide gush'd in brightness 

From the fountain's living spring, — 
And they stood — those two — forsaken 

By all earthly love or aid. 



MRS. NORTON. 



363 



Upheld by God's firm promise, 

Serene and undismay'd ! 
And thou, Nain's grieving widow ! 

Wiiose task of life seem'd done, 
When the pale corse lay before thee 

Of thy dear and only son ; 
Though death, that fearful shadow, 

Had vcil'd his fair young eyes. 
There was mercy for thy weeping. 

There was pity for thy sighs ! 
The gentle voice of Jesus, 

(Wlio the touch of sorrow knew) 
The grave's cold claim arrested 

E'er it hid him from thy view ; 
And those loving orbs re-open'd 

And knew thy mournful face, — 
And the stiff limbs warm'd and bent them 

With all life's moving grace, — 
And his senses dawn'd and waken'd 

From the dark and frozen spell. 
Which death had cast around him 

Whom thou didst love so well ; 
Till, like one return'd from exile 

To his former home of rest, 
Who speaks not while his mother 

Falls sobbing on his breast; 
But with strange bewilder'd glances 

Looks round on objects near, 
To recognise and welcome 

All tliat memory held dear, — 
Thy young son stood before thee 

All living and restored, 
And they who saw the wonder 

Knelt down to praise the Lord ! 

The twilight hour is over ! 

In busier homes than mine, 
I can see the shadows crossing 

Athwart the taper's shine ; 
I hear the roll of chariots 

And the tread of homeward feet. 
And the lamps' long rows of splendour 

Gleam through the misty street. 
No more I mark the objects 

In my cold and cheerless room ; 
The fire's unheeded embers 

Have sunk — and all is gloom ; 
But I know where hang your pictures 

Against the silent wall. 
And my eyes turn sadly towards them. 

Though I hope — I hope through all. 
By the summons to that inother. 

Whose fondness fate beguiled. 
When the tyrant's gentle daughter 

Saved her river-fioating child ; — 
By the sudden joy which bounded 

In the banish'd Hagar's heart, 
When slie saw the gushing fountain 

From the sandy desert start; — 
By the living smile which greeted 

The lonely one of Nain, 
When her long last watch was over, 

And her hope seem'd wild and vain ;- 
By all the tender mercy 

God hath shown to human grief. 



When fate or man's perverseness 

Denied and barr'd relief, — 
By the helpless wo which taught me 

To look to Him alone. 
From tlie vain appeals for justice 

And wild efforts of my own, — 
By thy light — thou unseen future, 

And thy tears — thou bitter past, 
I will hope — though all forsake me — 

In His mercy to the last ! 



THE BLIND MAN TO HIS BRIDE. 

Whex first, beloved, in vanish'd hours 

The blind man sought thy love to gain. 
They said thy cheek was bright as flowers 

New freshen'd by the summer rain : 
They said thy movements, swift yet soft, 

Were such as make the winged dove 
Seem, as it gently soars aloft. 

The image of repose and love. 

They told me, too, an eager crowd 

Of wooers praised thy beauty rare; 
But that thy heart was all too proud 

A common love to meet or share. 
Ah ! thine was neither pride nor scorn, 

But in thy coy and virgin breast 
Dwelt preference, not of passion born, 

The love that hath a holier zest I 

Days came and went ; — thy step I heard 

Pause frequent, as it pass'd me by : — 
Days came and went ; — thy heart was stirr'd, 

And answer'd to my stifled sigh ! 
And thou didst make an humble choice, 

Content to be the blind man's bride. 
Who loved thee for thy gentle voice. 

And own'd no joy on earth beside. 

And well by that sweet voice I knew 

(Without the happiness of sight) 
Thy years, as yet, were glad and few, — 

Thy smile, most innocently bright : 
I knew how full of love's own grace 

The beauty of thy form must be ; 
And fancy idolized the face 

Whose loveliness I might not see ! 

Oh ! happy were those days, beloved ! 

I almost ceased for light to pine 
When through the summer vales we roved, 

Thy fond hand gently link'd in mine. 
Thy soft " Good night" still sweetly cheer'd 

The unbroken darkness of my doom ; 
And thy " Good morrow, love," endear'd 

Each sunrise that return'd in gloom ! 

At length, as years roll'd swiftly on. 

They spoke to me of Time's decay — 
Of roses from thy smooth check gone. 

And ebon ringlets turn'd to gray. 
Ah ! then I bless'd the sightless eyes 

Which could not feel the deepening shade, 
Nor watch beneath succeeding skies 

Thy withering beauty faintly fade. 



364 



MRS. NORTON. 



/ saw no paleness on thy cheek, 

No lines upon thy forehead smooth, — 
But still the blind man heard thee speak 

In accents made to bless and soothe. 
Still he could feel thy guiding hand 

As through the woodlands wild we ranged, — 
Still in the summer light could stand, 

And know thy heart and voice unchanged. 

And still, beloved, till life grows cold, 

We '11 wander 'neath a genial sky, 
And only know that we are old 

By counting happy years gone by : 
For thou to me art still as fair 

As when those happy years began, — 
When first thou earnest to sooth and share 

The sorrows of a sightless man ! 

Old Time, who changes all below. 

To wean men gently for the grave, 
Hath brought us no increase of wo. 

And leaves us all he ever gave : 
For I am still a helpless thing. 

Whose darken'd world is cheer'd by thee — 
And thou art she whose beauty's spring 

The blind man vainly yearn'd to see ! 



THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 

Spirit ! who over this our mortal earth, 

Where naught hath birth 

Which imperfection doth not some way dim 

Since earth offended Him — 

Thou who unseen, from out thy radiant wings 

Dost shower down light o'er mean and common 

things ; 
And, wandering to and fro. 

Through the condcmn'd and sinful world dost go. 
Haunting that wilderness, the human heart. 
With gleams of glory that too soon depart, 
Gilding both weed and flower ; — [power 1 

What is thy birth divine ? and whence thy mighty 

The sculptor owns thee ! On his high pale brow 

Bewildering images are pressing now ; 

Groups whose immortal grace 

His chisel ne'er shall trace. 

Though in his mind the fresh creation glows ; 

High forais of godlike strength, 

Or limbs whose languid length 

The marble fixes in a sweet repose ! 

At thy command. 

His true and patient hand 

Moulds the dull clay to beauty's richest line. 

Or with more tedious skill, 

Obedient to thy will, 

By touches imperceptible and fine, 

Works slowly day by day 

The rough-hewn block away. 

Till the soft shadow of the bust's pale smile 

Wakes into statue-life and pays the assiduous toil ! 

Thee the young painter knows, — -whose fervent 

eyes. 
O'er the blank waste of canvass fondly bending. 



See fast within its magic circle rise 

Some pictured scene, with colours softly blending, — 

Green bowers and leafy glades. 

The old Arcadian shades. 

Where thwarting glimpses of the sun are thrown, 

And dancing nymphs and shepherds one by one 

Appear to bless his sight 

In fancy's glowing light. 

Peopling that spot of green earth's flowery breast 

With every attitude of joy and rest. 

Lo ! at his pencil's touch steals faintly forth 
(Like an uprising star in the cold north) 
Some face which soon shall glow with beauty's fire : 
Dim seems the sketch to those who stand around, 
Dim and uncertain as an echo'd sound, [inspire ! 
But oh ! how bright to him, whose hand thou dost 

Thee, also, doth the dreaming poet hail. 

Fond comf )rter of many a weary day — 

When through the clouds his fancy's ear can sail 

To worlds of radiance far, hoio far, away ! 

At thy clear touch, (as at the burst of light 

Which morning shoots along the purple hills, 

Chasing the shadows of the vanish'd night. 

And silvering all the darkly gushing rills. 

Giving each waking blossom, gemm'd with dew, 

Its bright and proper hue,) — 

He suddenly beholds the checker'd face 

Of this old world in its young Eden grace ! 

Disease, and want, and sin, and pain, arc not — 

Nor homely and familiar things: — man's lot 

Is like aspirations — bright and high ; [die, 

And even in the haunting thought that man must 

His dream so changes from its fearful strife, 

Death seems but fainting into purer life I 

Nor only these tliy presence woo, 

The less inspired own thee too ! 

Thou hast thy tranquil source 

In the deep well-springs of the human heart. 

And gushest with sweet force 

When most imprison'd ; causing tears to start 

In the worn citizen's o'ervvearied eye. 

As, with a sigh. 

At the bright close of some rare holiday. 

He sees the branches wave, the waters play — 

And hears the clock's far distant mellow chime 

Warn him a busier world reclaims his time I 

Thee, childhood's heart confesses, — when he sees 

The heavy rose-bud crimson in the breeze. 

When the red coral wins his eager gaze. 

Or the warm sunbeam dazzles with its rays. 

Thee, tlirough his varied hours of rapid joy, 

The eager boy, — 

Who wild across the grassy meadow springs, 

And still with sparkling eyes 

Pursues the uncertain prize. 

Lured 'uy the velvet glory of its wings ! 

And so from youth to age — yea, till the end — 
An unforsaking, unforgetting friend, 
Thou hoverest round us ! And when all is o'er. 
And earth's most loved illusions please no more, 
Thou stealest gently to the couch of death," 
There, while the lagging breath 



MRS. NORTON. 



365 



Comes faint and fitfully, to usher nigh 

Consoling visions from thy native sky, 

Making it sweet to die ! 

The sick man's ears are faint — his eyes are dim — 

But his heart listens to the heavenward hymn, 

And his soul sees — in lieu of that sad band, 

Who come with mournful tread 

To kneel about his bed, — 

God's white-robed angels, who around him stand. 

And waive his spirit to "the Belter -Land !" 

So, living, — dying, — still our hearts pursue 
That loveliness which never met our view ; 
Still to the last tho ruHng thought will reign, 
Nor deem one feeling given — was given in vain! 
For it may be, our banish'd souls recall 
In this, their earthly thrall, 

(With the sick dreams of exiles,) that far world 
Whence angels once were hurl'd ; 
Or it may be, a faint and trembling sense. 
Vague, as permitted by Omnipotence, 
Foreshows the immortal radiance round us shed. 
When the imperfect shall be perfected ! 
Like the chain'd eagle in his fetter'd might. 
Straining upon the heavens his wistful sight. 
Who toward the upward glory fondly springs. 
With all the vain strength of his shivering wings, — 
So chain'd to earth, and baffled — yet so fond 
Of the pure sky which lies so far beyond, 
We make the aitempf io soar in many a thought 
Of beauty born, and into beauty wrought ; 
Dimly we struggle onwards : — who shall say 
Which glimmering light leads nearest to the day 1 



THE MOTHER'S HEART. 

WriES' first thou earnest, gentle, shy, and fond, 
My eldest-born, first hope, and dearest treasure. 

My heart received thee with a joy beyond 
All that it yet had felt of earthly pleasure; 

Nor thought that any love again might be 

So deep and strong as that I felt for thee. 

Faithful and true, with sense beyond thy years, 
And natural piety that lean'd to heaven ; 

Wrung by a harsh word suddenly to tears, 
Yet patient to rebuke when justly given — 

Obedient — easy to be reconciled — 

And meekly cheerful — such wert thou, my child ! 

Not willing to be left; still by my side [dying ; — 
Haunting my walks, while summer-day was 

Nor leaving in thy turn ; but pleased to glide 
Through the dark room where I was sadly lying. 

Or by the couch of pain, a sitter meek. 

Watch the dim eye, and kiss the feverish check. 

boy ! of such as thou are oftenest made 
Earth's fragile idols; like a tender flower, 

No strength in all thy freshness, — prone to fade, — 
And bending weakly to the thunder-shower, — 

Still, rflund the loved, thy heart found force to bind, 

And clung, like woodbine shaken in the wind! 

Then Tiiorr, my merry love; — bold in thy glee, 
Under the bousrh. or by the firelight dancing, 



With thy sweet temper, and thy spirit free, 

Did.stcome, as restless as a bird's wing glancing, 
Full of a wild and irrepressible mirth, 
Like a young sunbeam to the gladden'd earth ! 

Thine was the shout! the song! the burst of joy! 
Which sweet from childhood's rosy lip resouud- 
etli : 
Thine was the eager spirit naught could cloy, 
And the glad heart from which all grief re- 
boundeth ; 
And many a mirthful jest and mock reply, 
Lurk'd in the laughter of thy dark-blue eye ! 

And thine was many an art to win and bless, 
The cold and stern to joy and fondness warming; 

The coaxing smile; — the frequent soft caress; — 
The earnest tearful prayer all wrath disarming! 

Again my heart a new affection found, [bound. 

But thought that love with thee had reach'd its 

At length THOU camest : thou, the last and least; 

Nick-named " The Emperor" by thy laughing 
brothers, 
Because a haughty spirit swell'd thy breast, 

And thou didst seek to rule and sway the others; 
Mingling with every playful infant wile 
A mimic majesty that made us smile: 

And oh ! most like a regal child wert thou ! 

An eye of resolute and successful scheming! 
Fair shoulders — curling lip — and dauntless brow — 

Fit for the world's strife, not for poet's dreaming: 
And proud the lifting of thy stately head, 
And the firm bearing of thy conscious tread. 

Different from both ! Yet each succeeding claim, 
I, that all other love had been forswearing, 

Forthwith admitted, equal and the same; 

Nor injured either, by this love's comparing; 

Nor stole a fraction for the newer call — 

But in the mother's heart, found room for all ! 



THE CHILD OF EARTH. 

Faixtur her slow step falls from day to day, 

Death's hand is heavy on her darkening brow ; 
Yet doth she fondly cling to earth, and say, 

" I am content to die, but, oh ! not now ! 
Not while the blossoms of the joyous spring 

Make the warm air such luxury to breathe ; 
Not while the birds such lays of gladness sing; 

Not while bright flowers around my footsteps 
wreathe. 
Spare me. great God, lift up my drooping brow ! 
I am content to die — but, oh ! not now !" 

The spring hath ripen'd into summer-time, 

The season's viewless boundary is past; 
The glorious sun hath reach'd his burning prime ; 

Oh ! must this gliin])se of beauty be the last] 
" Let me not perish while o'er land and lea, 

With silent steps the lord of light moves on; 
Nor while the murmur of the mountain bee 

Greets my dull ear with music in its tone! 
Pale sickness dims my eye, and clouds my brow ; 
I am content to die — but, oh ! not now !" 
2h3 



366 



MRS. NORTON. 



Summer is gone, and autumn's soberer hues 

Tint the ripe fruits, and gild the waving com ; 
The huntsman swift the flying game pursues, 

Shouts the halloo, and winds his eager horn. 
" Spare me awhile to wander forth and gaze 

On the broad meadows and the quiet stream, 
To watch in silence while the evening rays 

Slant through the fading trees with ruddy gleam ! 
Cooler the breezes play around my brow ; 
I am content to die — but, oh ! not now !" 

The bleak wind whistles, snow-showers, far and near. 

Drift without echo to the whitening ground ; 
Autumn hath pass'd away, and, cold and drear. 

Winter stalks on, with frozen mantle bound. 
Yet still that pray'r ascends : — Oh ! laughingly 

My little brothers round the warm hearth crowd, 
Our home-fire blazes broad, and bright, and high. 

And the roof rings with voices glad and loud ; 
Spare me awhile ! raise up my drooping brow ! 
I am content to die — but, oh ! not now !" 

The spring is come again — the joyful spring ! 

Again the banks with clustering flowers are spread; 
The wild bird dips upon its wanton wing — 

The child of earth is numl)er'd with the dead! 
" Thee never more the sunshine shall awake. 
Beaming all readily through the lattice-pane ; 
The steps of friends thy slumbers may not break. 

Nor fond familiar voice arouse again ! 
Death's silent shadow veils thy darken'd brow ; 
Why didst thou linger 1 — thou art happier now !" 



ATARAXIA. 

Co^iE o'er the green hills to the sunny sea ! — 

The boundless sea that washeth many lands. 
Where shells unknown to England, fair and free, 

Lie brightly scatter'd on the gleaming sands, 
There, midst the hush of slumbering ocean's roar, 

We '11 sit and watch the silver-tissued waves 
Creep languidly along the basking shore. 

And kiss thy gentle feet, like eastern slaves. 

And we will take some volume of our choice, 

Full of a quiet poetry of thought ; 
And thou shalt read me, with thy plaintive voice. 

Lines which some gifted mind hath sweetly 
wrought. 
And T will listen, gazing on thy face — 

Pale as some cameo on the Italian shell — 
Or looking out across the far blue space 

Where glancing sails to gentle breezes swell. 

Come forth I The sun hath flung on Thetis' breast 

The glittering tresses of his golden hair ; 
All things are heavy with a noonday rest, 

And floating sea-birds leave the stirless air. 
Against the sky, in outlines clear and rude, 

The cleft rocks stand, while sunbeams slant 
between ; 
And lulling winds are murmuring through the wood 

Which skirts the bright bay with its fringe of green. 



Come forth ! All motion is so gentle now. 

It seems thy step alone should walk the earth — 
Thy voice alone, the " ever soft and low," 

Wake the far-haunting echoes into birth. 
Too wild would be Love's passionate store of 
hope — 

Unmeet the influence of his changeful power; 
Ours be companionship, whose gentle scope 

Hath charm enough for such a tranquil hour. 

In that, no jealousy — no wild regret 

Lies like deep poison in a flower's bright cup, 

Which thirsty lips for ever seek, and yet 
For ever murmur as they drink it up. 

The memory of thy beauty ne'er can rise 

• With haunting bitterness in days to come ; 

Thy name can n«ver choke my heart with sighs, 
Nor leave the vex'd tongue faltering, faint, and 
dumb. 

Therefore come forth, oh gentle friend ! and roam 

Where the high cliffs shall give us ample shade, 
And see how glassy lie the waves, whose foam 

Hath power to make the seaman's heart afraid. 
Seek thou no veil to shroud thy soft brown hair — 

Wrap thou no mantle round thy graceful form ; 
The cloudless sky smiles forth as still and fair 

As though earth ne'er could know another storm. 

Come ! Let not listless sadness make delay — 

Beneath heaven's light that sadness will depart; 
And as we wander on our shoreward way, 

A strange, sweet peace shall enter in thine heart. 
We will not weep, nor talk of vanish'd years, 

When, link by link, Hope's glittering chain was 
riven ; 
Those who are dead shall claim from love no tears — 

Those who have injured us shall be forgiven. 

Few have my summers been, and fewer thine ; 

Youth ruin'd is the weary lot of both ; 
To both, all lonely shows our life's decline — 

Both with old friends and ties have waxed wroth. 
But yet we will not weep ! The breathless calm 

Which kills the golden earth, and wide blue sea, 
Shall pour into our souls mysterious balm, 

And fill us with its own tranquillity. 

We will not mar the scene — we will not look 

To the veil'd future, or the shadowy past ; 
Seal'd up shall be sad Memory's open book. 

And childhood's idleness return at last ! 
Joy, with his restless, ever-fluttering wings, 

And Hope, his gentle brother — all shall cease ; 
Like weary hinds that seek the desert s[)rings, 

Our one sole feeling shall be peace — deep peace ! 

Then come ! Come o'er the green hills to the sea — 

The boundless sea that washeth many lands ; 
And with thy plaintive voice, oh ! read to me, 

As v^'e two sit upon the golden sands. 
And I will listen, gazing on that face — 

Pale as some cameo on the Italian shell — 
Or looking out across the far blue space 

Where glancing sails to gentle breezes swell ! 



MRS. NORTON. 



357 



THE WIDOW TO HER SON'S BE- 
TROTHED. 

An, cease to plead with that sweet cheerful voice, 

Nor bid me struggle with a weight of wo, 
Lest from the very tone that says " rejoice," 

A double bitterness of grief should grow ; 
Those words from thee convey no gladdening 
thought. 

No sound of comfort lingers in their tone, 
But by their means a haunting shade is brought 

Of love and happiness for ever gone ! 

My son ! — alas, hast thou forgotten him, 

That thou art full of hopeful plans again ? 
His heart is cold — his joyous eyes arc dim, — 

For him i\\e future is a word in vain ! 
He never more the welcome hours may share, 

Nor bid love's sunshine cheer our lonely home, — 
How hast thou coiiquer'd all the long despair 

Born of that sentence — He is in the tomb ? 

How can thy hand with cheerful fondness press 

The hands of friends who still on earth may stay — 
Remembering his most passionate caress 

When the long parting summon'd him away f 
How canst thou keep from bitter weeping, while 

Strange voices tell thee thou art brightly fair — 
Remembering how he loved thy playful smile, 

Kiss'd thy smooth cheek, and praised thy hur- 
nish'd hair!" 

How canst thou laugh 1 How canst thou warble 
songs ] 
How canst thou lightly tread the meadow-fields, 
Praising the freshness which to spring belongs, 
And the sweet incense which the hedge-flower 
yields 1 
Does not the many-blossom'd spring recall, 

Our pleasant walks through cowslip-spangled 
meads, — 
The violet-scented lanes — the warm south-wall. 
Where early flo w'rets rear'd their welcome heads? 

Does not remembrance darken on thy brow 

When the wild rose a richer fragrance flings — 
When the caressing breezes lift the bough, 

And the sweet thrush more passionately sings ; — 
Dost thou not, then, lament for him whose form 

Was ever near thee, full of earnest grace ? 
Does not the sudden darkness of the storm 

Seem luridly to fall on nature's face 1 

It does to ME ! The murmuring summer breeze. 

Which thou dost tin^n thy glowing cheek to meet, 
For me sweeps desolately through the trees, 

And moans a dying requiem at my feet ! 
The glistening river which in beauty glides, 

Sparkling and blue witli morn's triumphant light, 
All lonely flows, or in its bosom hides 

A broken image lost to human sight ! 

But THOU ! — Ah ! turn thee not in grief away ; 

I do not wish thy soul as sadly wrung — 
I know the freedom of thy spirit's play, 

I know thy bounding heart is fresh and young: 



I know corroding Time will slowly break 

The links which bound most fondly and most fast. 

And Hope will be youth's comforter, and make 
The long bright future overweigh the past. 

Only, when full of tears I raise mine eyes 

And meet thine ever full of smiling light, 
I feel as though thy vanish'd sympathies 

Were buried in his grave, where all is night; 
And when beside our lonely hearth I sit, 

And thy light laugh comes echoing to my ear, 
I wonder how the waste of mirth and wit 

Hath still the power thy widow'd heart to cheer ! 

Bear with me yet ! Mine is a harsh complaint! 

And thy youth's innocent light-heartedness 
Should rather soothe me •when my spirit's faint 

Than seem to mock my age's lone distress. 
But oh ! the tide of grief is swelling high. 

And if so soon forgetfulness must be — 
If, for the dead, thou hast no further sigh, [me! 

Weep for his mother I — Weep, young bride, for 



WEEP NOT FOR HIM THAT DIETH.* 

Weep not for him that dieth — 

For he sleeps, and is at rest ; 
And the couch whereon he lieth 

Is the green earth's quiet breast : 
But weep for him who pineth 

On a far land's hateful shore. 
Who wearily declineth 

Where ye see his face no more! 

Weep not for him that dieth, 

For friends are round his bed. 
And many a young lip sigheth 

When they name the carl}' dead ; 
But weep for him that livcth 

Where none will know or care. 
When the groan his faint heart giveth 

Is the last sigh of despair. 

Weep not for him that dieth. 

For his strugghng soul is free. 
And the world from which it flieth 

Is a world of misery ; 
But weep for him that weareth 

The captive's galling chain : 
To the agony lie beareth. 

Death were but little pain. 

Weep not for him that dieth. 

For he has ceased from tears. 
And a voice to his replieth 

Which he hath not heard for years; 
But weep for him who weepeth 

On that cold land's cruel shore-— 
Blest, blest is he that sleepeth, — 

Weep for the dead no more ! 



* " Woep yp. not for tli«; dpnd, neither hf moan him ; but 
weep sore fur him thit sineih aw;iy, for he shall ri'tiirn 
no more, nor see his native country." — Jeremiah xxii. 10. 



368 



MRS, NORTON. 



THE ARAB'S FAREWELL TO HIS 
HORSE. 

My beautiful ! my beautiful I 

That standest meekly by 
With thy proudly arch'd and glossy neck, 

And dark and fiery eye ; 
Fret not to roam the desert now, 

With all thy winged speed — 
I may not mount on thee again — 

Thou'rt sold, my Arab steed ! 
Fret not with that impatient hoof — 

Snufl'not the breezy wind — 
The further that thou flicst now, 

So far am I behind; 
The stranger hath thy bridle rein — 

Thy master hath his gold — 
Fleet-limb'd and beautiful ! farewell ! — 

Thou 'rt sold, my steed — thou 'rt sold ! 

Farewell ! those free untired limbs 

Full many a mile must roam, 
To reach the chill and wintry sky. 

Which clouds tlic stranger's home ; 
Some other hand, less fond, must now 

Thy corn and bread prepare : 
The silky mane I braided once, 

Must be another's care ! 
The morning sun shall dawn again, 

But never more with thee 
Shall [ gallop through the desert paths, 

Where we were wont to be ; 
Evening shall darken on the earth ; 

And o'er the sandy plain 
Some other steed, with slower step, 

Shall bear me home again. 

Yes, thou must go ! the wild, free breeze, 

The brilliant sun and sky, 
Thy master's home — from all of these. 

My exiled one must fly. 
Thy proud, dark ej'e will grow less proud. 

Thy step become less fleet, 
And vainly shalt thou arch thy neck, 

Thy master's hand to meet. 
Only in sleep shall I behold 

That dark eye, glancing bright — 
Only in sleep shall hear again 

That step so firm and light: 
And when I raise my dreaming arm 

To check or cheer thy speed, 
Then must I starting wake, to feel — 

Thou'rt sold, my Arab steed ! 

Ah! rudely then, unseen by me, 

Some cruel hand may chide, 
Till foam-wreaths lie, like crested waves, 

Along thy panting side : 
And the rich blood that's in thee swells, 

In thy indignant pain, 
Till careless eyes, which rest on thee. 

May count each started vein. 
Will they ill use thee 1 If I thought — 

But no, it cannot be — 
Thou art so swift, yet easy curb'd; 

So gentle, yet so free. 



And yet, if haply when thou'rt gone, 
My lonely heart should yearn — 

Can the hand which casts thee from it now, 
Command thee to return 1 

Return ! — alas ! my Arab steed ! 

What shall thy master do. 
When thou, who wert his all of joy. 

Hast vanish'd from his view 1 
When the dim distance cheats mine eye. 

And through the gathering tears 
Thy bright form, for a moment, 

Like the false mirage appears. 
Slow and unmounted will I roam. 

With weary foot alone. 
Where with fleet step and joyous bound 

Thou oft has borne me on ; 
And sitting down by that green well, 

I '11 pause and sadly think, 
" It was here he bow'd his glossy neck, 

When last I saw him drink !" 

When last I satv thee drink .' — away ! 

The fever'd dream is o'er — 
I could not live a day, and know 

That we should meet no more ! 
They tempted me, my beautiful ! 

For hunger's power is strong — 
They tempted me, my beautiful ! 

But I have loved too long. 
Who said that I had given thee up 1 — 

Who said that thou wert sold 1 
'Tis false, — 'tis false, my Arab steed ! 

I fling them back their gold ! 
Thus, thus, I leap upon thy back. 

And scour the distant plains ; 
Away ! who overtakes us now. 

Shall claim thee for his pains. 



WE HAVE BEEN FRIENDS TOGETHER. 

We have been friends together. 

In sunshine and in shade ; 
Since first beneath the chestnut trees 

In infancy we play'd. 
But coldness dwells within thy heart, 

A cloud is on thy brow ; 
We have been friends together — 

Shall a light word part us now 1 

We have been ggy together ; 

We have laugh'd at little jests ; 
For the fount of hope was gushing 

Warm and joyous in our breasts. 
But laughter now hath fled thy lip. 

And sullen glooms thy brow; 
We have been gay together — 

Shall a light word part us now ? 

We have been sad together. 

We have wept with bitter tears. 
O'er the grass-grown graves, where slumber'd 

The hopes of early years. 
The voices which are silent there 

Would bid thee clear thy brow ; 
We have been sad together — 

Oh ! what shall part us now ? 



MRS. NORTON. 



369 



RECOLLECTIONS. 

Do you remember all the sunny places, [gethcrl 

Where in bright days, long past, we play'd to- 
Do you remember all the old home faces 

That gather'd round the hearth in wintry weather? 
Do you remember all the happy meetings. 

In Summer evenings round the open door — 
Kind looks, kind hearts, kind words and tender 
greetings, 

And clasping hands whose pulses beat no more 1 
Do you remember them ? 

Do you remember all the merry laughter; 

The voices round the swing in our old garden : 
The dog thiit, when we ran, still foUow'd after; 

The teazing frolic sure of speedy pardon : 
We were but children then, young happy creatures, 

And hardly knew how much we had to lose — 
But now the dreamlike memory of those features 

Comes back, and bids my darken'd spirit muse. 
Do you remember them ] 

Do you remember when we first departed 

From all the old companions who were round us, 
How very soon again we grew light-hearted, 

And talk'd with smiles of all the links which 
bound us ] 
And after, when our footsteps were returning, 

With unfelt weariness, o'er hill and plain ; 
How ouryoung hearts keptboilingup, and burning. 

To think how soon we'd be at home again, 
Do you remember this 1 

Do you remember how the dreams of glory 
Kept fading from us like a fairy treasure ; 
How we thought less of being famed in story, 
And more of those to whom our fame gave plea- 
sure. 
Do you remember in far countries, weeping, 
When a light breeze, a flower, hath brought to mind 
Old happy thoughts, whicli till that hour were 
sleeping. 
And made us yearn for those we left behind ] 

Do you remember this 1 

Do you remember when no sound woke gladly. 
But desolate echoes through our home were 
ringing, 
How for a while we talk'd — then paused full sadly. 
Because our voices bitter thoughts were bringing ! 
Ah me ! those days — those days ! my friend, my 
brother, 
Sit down, and let us talk of all our wo. 
For we have nothing left but one another ; — 
Yet where thei/ went, old playmate, tee shall go — 
Let us remember this. 



SONNET. 

Be frank with me, and I accept my lot; 

But deal not witli mc as a grieving child, 
Who for the loss of that which he hath not 

Is by a show of kindness thus beguiled. 
47 



Raise not for me, from its enshrouded tomb, 

The ghostly likeness of a hope deceased ; 
Nor think to cheat the darkness of my doom 

By wavering doubts how far thou art released : 
This dressing pity in the garb of love, — 

This effort of the heart to seem the same, — 
These sighs and lingerings, (which nothing prove 

But that thou leavest me with a kind of shame,) — 
Remind me more, by their most vain deceit. 
Of the dear loss of all which thou dost counterfeit. 



THE FALLEN LEAVES. 

We stand among the fallen leaves, 

Young children at our play. 
And laugh to see the yellow things 

Go rustling on their way : 
Right merrily we hunt them down, 

The autumn winds and we. 
Nor pause to gaze where snow-drifts lie, 

Or sunbeams gild the tree : 
With dancing feet we leap along 

Where withcr'd boughs are strown ; 
Nor past nor future checks our song — 

The presoit is our own. 

We stand among the fallen leaves 

In youth's enchanted spring — 
When hope (who wearies at the last)' 

First spreads her eagle wing. 
We tread with steps of conscious strength 

Beneath the leafless trees. 
And the colour kindles in our cheek 

As blows the winter breeze ; 
While, gazing towards the cold gray sky. 

Clouded with snow and rain. 
We wish the old year all past by. 

And the j'oung spring come again. 

We stand among the fallen leaves 

In manhood's haughty prime — 
When first our pausing hearts begin 

To love " the olden time ;" 
And, as we gaze, we sigh to think 

How many a year hath pass'd 
Since neath those cold and faded trees 

Our footsteps wander'd last; 
And old companions — now perchance 

Estranged, forgot, or dead — 
Come round us, as those autumn leaves 

Are crush'd beneath our tread. 

We stand among the fallen leaves 

In our own autumn day — 
And, tottering on with feeble steps, 

Pursue our cheerless way. 
We look not back — too long ago 

Hath all we loved been lost ; 
Nor forward — for we may not live 

To see our new hope cross'd : 
But on we go — the sun's faint beam 

A feeble warmth imparts — 
Childhood without its joy returns — 

The present fills our hearts ! 



370 



MRS. NORTON. 



THE CARELESS WORD, 

A WORD is ringing through my brain: 
It was not meant to give me pain ; 
It had no tone to bid it stay, 
When other things had pass'd away ; 
It had no meaning more than all 
Which in an idle hour fall : 
It was v/henjirst the sound I heard 
A lightly-utter'd, careless word. 

That word — oh ! it doth haunt me now. 
In scenes of joy, in scenes of wo; 
By night, by day, in sun or shade, 
With the half smile that gently play'd 
Reproachfully, and gave the sound 
Eternal power through life to wound. 
There is no voice I ever heard 
So deeply fix'd as that one word. 

When in the laughing crowd some tone, 
Like those whose joyous sound is gone, 
Strikes on my ear, I shrink — for then 
The careless word comes back again. 
When all alone I sit and gaze 
Upon the cheerful home-tire blaze, 
Lo ! freshly as when first 'twas heard, 
Returns that lightly-utter'd word. 

When rlreams bring back the days of old, 
With all that wishes could not hold ; 
And from my feverish couch I start 
To press a shadow to my heart — 
Amid its beating echoes, clear 
That little word I seem to hear : 
In vain I say, while it is heard, 
Why weep? — 'twas but a foolish word. 

It comes — and with it come the tears. 
The hopes, the joys of former years ; 
Forgotten smiles, forgotten looks, 
Tliick as dead leaves on autumn brooks, 
And all as joyless, though they ivere 
The brightest things life's spring could share. 
Oh ! would to God I ne'er had heard 
That lightly-utter'd, careless word ! 

It was the first, the only one 
Of these which lips forever gone 
Breathed in their love — which had for me 
Rebuke of harshness at my glee: 
And if those lips were heard to say, 
"Beloved, let it pass away," 
Ah ! then, perchance — but I have heard 
The last dear tone — the careless word ! 

Oh ! ye who, meeting, sigh to part. 
Whose words are treasures to some heart. 
Deal gentlv, ere tlie dark days come. 
When earth hath but for one a home ; 
Lest, musing o'er the past, like me, 
'i'hey feel their hearts wrung bitterly, 
And, heeding not what else they heard. 
Dwell weeping on a careless word. 



THE MOURNERS. 

Low she lies, who blest our eyes 

Through many a sunny day ;- 
She may not smile, she will not rise— 

The life hath past away ! 
Yet there is a world of light beyond. 

Where we neither die nor sleep — 
She is (he)-e, of whom our souls were fond — 

Then wherefore do we weep? 

The heart is cold, whose thoughts were told 
In each glance of her glad bright eye ; 

And she lies pale, who was so bright, 
She scarce seem'd made to die. 

Yet we know that her soul is happy now, 
Where the saints their calm watch keep ; 

That angels are crowning that fair young brow- 
Then wherefore do we weep 1 

Her laughing voice made all rejoice. 
Who caught the happy sound ; 

There was gladness in her very step. 
As it lightly touch 'd the ground. 

The echoes of voice and step are gone ; 
There is silence still and deep : 

Yet we know she sings by God's bright throne- 
Then wherefore do we weep 1 

The cheek's pale tinge, the lid's dark fringe, 

That lies like a shadow there. 
Were beautiful in the eyes of all — 

And her glossy golden hair! 
But though that lid may never wake 

From its dark and dreamless sleep. 
She is gone were young hearts do not break — 

Then wherefore do we weep ? 

That world of light with joy is bright. 

This is a woi-ld of wo : 
Shall we grieve that her soul hath taken flight, 

Because we dwell below 7, 
We will bury her under the mossy sod. 

And one long bright tress we'll keep; 
We have only given her back to God — 

Ah ! wherefore do we weep ? 



SONNET. 

Like an enfranchised bird, who wildly springs, 

With a keen sparkle in his glancing eye 
And a strong effort in his quivering wings, 

Up to the blue vault of the happy sky, — 
So my enamour'd heart, so long thine own, 

At length from love's imprisonment set free. 
Goes forth into the open world alone. 

Glad and exulting in its liberty : 
But like that helpless bird, (confined so long, 

His weary wings have lost all power to soar. 
Who soon forgets to trill his joyous song. 

And, feebly fluttering, sinks to earth once more,) 
So. from its former bonds released in vain, [chain. 
My heart still feels the weight of that remember'd 




wu® m^c 



JOHN STERLING 



During the last five or six years the readers 
of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine have 
been from time to time delighted by the ap- 
pearance in that popular miscellany of various 
papers under the signature of Arcii^us. 
Among them has been a series in prose, en- 
titled "Legendary Lore," from which "The 
Onyx Ring," a story of thrilling interest, and 
several other essays and tales, have been re- 
printed in this country. But superior to the 
prose articles — beautiful and highly wrought 
as these are — are the author's poetical writ- 
ings, distinguished alike for purity of thought, 
delicacy of fancy, and depth and tenderness 
of feeling. "They have the pleasing tone of 



WoRDSv/ORTH, without the mannerism of 
phrase and imagery by which the imitators 
of that poet are distinguished." 

A collection of these poems, with one much 
longer than any that had appeared in Black- 
wood's Magazine, entitled "The Sexton's 
Daughter," was published in London, in 
1839, and it was then discovered that they 
were written by John Sterling, in early life 
a clergyman, and latterly a student in philo- 
sophy and man of letters. He subsequently 
wrote " Hymns of a Hermit" and " Strafford, 
a Tragedy." Since the first edition of this 
work was published we have heard of his 
death, which occurred in September, 1841. 



TO A CHILD. 

Dear cliild ! whom sleep can hardly tame, 
As five and beautiful as flame, 
Thou glancest round my graver hours 
As if thy crown of wild-wood flowers 
Were not by mortal forehead worn, 
But on the summer breeze were borne, 
Or on a mountain streamlet's waves, 
Came glistening down from dreamy caves. 

With bright round cheek, amid whose glow 
Delight and wonder come and go, 
And eyes whose inward meanings play, 
Congenial with the light of day, 
And !)row so calm, a home for thought, 
Before he knows his dwelling wrought; 
Though wise indeed thou seemest not. 
Thou brightenest well the wise man's lot. 

That shout proclaims the undoubting mind, 
That laughter leaves no ache behind ; 
And in thy look and dance of glee, 
Unforced, unthought of, simply free. 
How weak the schoolman's formal art 
Thy soul and body's bliss to part ! 
I hail the childhood's very lord, 
In gaze and glance, in voice and word. 

In spite of all foreboding fear, 
A thing thou art of present cheer ; 
And thus to be beloved and known 
As is a rushy fountain's tone, 
As is the forest's leafy shade, 
Or blackbird's hidden serenade : 
Thou art a flash that lights the whole ; 
A push from nature's vernal soul. 



And yet, dear child ! within thee lives 
A power that deeper feeling gives. 
That makes thee more than light or air. 
Than all things sweet and all things fair ; 
And sweet and fair as aught may be, 
Diviner life belongs to thee, 
For mid thine aimless jovs began 
The perfect heart and will of man. 

Thus what thou art foreshows to me 
How greater far thou soon shall be ; 
And while amid thy garlands blow 
The winds that warbling come and go, 
Ever within not loud but clear 
Prophetic murmur fills the ear. 
And says that every human birth 
Anew discloses God to earth. 



PROSE AND SONG. 

I look'd upon a plain of green, 

That some one call'd the land of prose, 

Where many living things were seen. 
In movement or repose. 

I look'd upon a stately hill 

That well was named the mount of song, 
Where golden shadows dwelt at will 

The woods and streams among. 

But most this fact my wonder bred, 

Though known by all the nobly wise,^ 

It was the mountain streams that fed- 
The fair green plain's amenities. 

371 



372 JOHN STERLIxXG. 


APHRODITE. 


VIII. 




"Then with the boisterous wedding comes 


I. 


The dark, unhonour'd life ;' 


A spRTXG-TixE eve illumined wide 


The worshipp'd goddess, fading then. 


A sunny Grecian land. 


Is known an earthly wife ; 


Where peace was guarded valiantly 


And all the longing sighs that now 


By many a spearman's hand ; 


In all its utterance play, 


From field and vineyard home retnrn'd 


But like a tedious burden round 


The weary peasant crew, 


An old-remember'd lay. 


And children laugh'd and leap'd to see 




Their fathers come in view. 


IX. 
" And if at last from long disdain, 


II. 

The closing twilight dimly fell 


And cold, averted eyes, 
To other lands and cities now 


Above the smoking roofs ; 
The labourers' eyes dropp'd heavilj'; 
The housewives left their woofs ; 


The bard in anguish flies. 
To other springs, and hills, and woods, 

And other ears than these. 
My name in melody will sound. 


While softly flew the western breeze 
Above the woods and streams, 


But breathed too low to sound amid 


And sail on distant seas. 


The slumberers' easy dreams. 


X. 


III. 


« And if in cave, or desert path, 


As on each lonely silent hearth 


Or at triumphal feast, 


The blaze was flickering low. 


The journeying minstrel sinks in death, 


1 The shaggy wolf-dog stretch'd himself 
Before the crimson glow ; 


From hopeless toil released ; 


Upon his tomb be this inscribed, — 


And shy nocturnal visitants, 


That he for Myrto died ; 


And horny-footed Pan, 
Through all the village wander'd slow 


And let his last lament record 


Her beauty and her pride." 


To guard the rest of man. 


XI. 


IV. 


So flow'd the unpitying virgin's thought. 


The mourners felt it comfort now 


When pierced the laurel shade 


That they were free to weep, 


A voice, that struck with dread and joy 


And in their musing youthful minds 


The bosom of the maid. 


AVent smilingly to sleep ; 


Unseen the man, but "known how well ! 


And some in joyous vision sought 


And while he breathed a song, 


The dance in flowery glades, 


His harp-string help'd with sweeter grief 


And some a tenderer delight, 


His overburden'd tongue. 


Unseen in forest shades. 


XII. 


V. 


" Once more, beloved maid ! I strive 


Yet one of all the loveliest. 


To touch thy frozen ear. 
And wake the hopes so often'd chill'd 


Young Myrto, sought not rest, 


By crowding fancies kept awake 


Upon the lap of fear. 
Once more, alas ! I seek to stir 


That flutter'd in her breast, 


While mid the pillar'd porch she sat 


A heart of human mould 


Of her old sire's abode, 


With throbs of nature's pulse, that has 
Sweet throbbings manifold. 


Unheeding that beneath the stars 


Her zoneless bosom glow'd. 


XIII. 

" And oh ! bethink thee, icy breast ! 


VI. 

She stoop'd her head, whose tresses hid 
Her clench'd and trembling hand ; 


How vain the thought of pride 


She felt her heart swell proudlier 


Which bids thee from my pleading turn 


Than in its purple band ; 


In sullenness aside ; 


And such the rippling stir of life 

Upon her earnest face. 
It seem'd a stormy spirit fill'd 


How weak and cheap a thing it is. 


But oh ! how rich in good 


The joy of hearts, when each to each 


A form of marble grace. 


Reveals its fondest mood. 


TII. 


XIV. 


" And let," she thought, " the poet bear 


"E'en hadst thou given some rival's head 


His sounding lyre and song. 


The flowery wreath of love. 


And still through temple, field, and mart 


Thy scorn of me men would not hate, 


My tuneful fame prolong; 


Nor would the gods reprove. 


For if I but repay the strain 


In words of bitter wrathfulness 


With word or look of praise, 


My grief might urge its way, 


'T is then the last of love and verse. 


But every curse invoked on thee 


The first of slavery's days. 


Would make my soul its prey. 



JOHN STERLING. 



373 



" Oh ! give me hut one whispcr'd word, 

Or gently witve thy hand : 
Bestow but tliis on him whose life 

Thy very looks command. 
The light of youth that gilds thee now 

Will not be always thine, 
But thou may'st bid in deathless song 

Thy beauty's radiance shine. 

xvr. 
" Thou speak'st no mild relenting word ! 

So part we, I and thou. 
To whom so oft in misery 

Has bent my laurell'd brow. 
The gods that favour song and love 

Will not be mock'd in vain. 
And higher they, proud Rock ! than thou ! 

To them I lift my strain." 

XTII. 

The minstrel turn'd his steps away, 

And moved with hurrying feet. 
Till past the slumberous gloom that fill'd 

The lonely village street ; 
And through the vale beyond he fled, 

And near the rocky shore. 
And climb'd the winding wooded path 

Tiiat up the mountain bore. 

XVIII. 

The silent stars were gazing all, 

The moon was up the sky. 
And from below the tranquil sea 

Sent measured sounds on high ; 
It broke beneath a steep ascent. 

Where Aphrodite's fane 
Appear'J a home of steadfast calm 

For wanderers o'er the main. 

XIX. 

And thiiher bent the bard his course, 

Until the rugged way 
Subdued his desperate recklessness 

To an abhorr'd delay ; 
And, pausing mid his haste, the thought 

Of her he left behind 
Brought tears into his burning eyes. 

And check 'd his fiercer mind. 

XX. 

Yet soon ho reach'd the terraced height, 

The spot the goddess chose, 
Where channell'd pillars round and strong 

At equal spaces rose ; 
Above were graven tablets fair, 

With gaps of dark between, 
And o'er the deep receding porch 

Celestial forms were seen. 



And soon he gain'd the marble steps, 

Before the abode divine. 
And soon he oped the brazen doors, 

And sank within the shrine ; 
'Twas dusk, and chill, and noiseless all. 

And scarce amid the shade 
He saw the form of her whose might 

Can give the hopeless aid. 



" And why," he cried, " O Goddess dread ! 

Must worshippers of thee. 
Mid all on eartii the most despised. 

Most miserable be 1 
Oh ! hast thou not the strength to save, 

Or art thou then indeed 
Too cold and too averse a power 

To succour mortal need ? 

XXIII. 

"And is it false what oft was said 

In days of old renown, 
Wliat hymn and lay so loud proclaim 

In camp, and field, and town. 
That tliou, a bounteous arbitress, 

Wilt hear when mourners call, 
Delightest most in man's delight. 

And sendest bliss to all ? 

xxir. 

" By thee, as tale and history tell. 

And sculptured marble gray. 
And oracle and festal rite. 

Surviving men's decay ; 
By thee all things are beautiful, * 

And peaceable, and strong, 
And joy from every throe is born, 

And mercy conquers wrong. 

xxr. 

"Thy birth, O Goddess kind and smooth, 

Was from the sunny sea. 
The crystal blue and milky foam 

In brightness cradled thee ; 
From thee all fairest things have light, 

Which they to men impart; 
Then vihence arise the pangs and storms 

That rend the lover's heart]" 

XXVI. 

'Twas thus the sorrowing bard address'd 

That presence blind and dim, 
Startling the visionary space. 

That had no help for him ; 
But then he raised in haste his e3-es. 

For lo ! a sudden ray 
Around the goddess cast a light, 

Her own peculiar day. 

xxvri. 

A living form behold she stood. 

Of more than sculptured grace ! 
The high immortal que^-n from heaven. 

The calm Olympian face! 
Eyes pure from human tear or smile, 

Yet ruling all on earth, 
And limbs whose garb of golden air 

Was dawn's primeval birth ! 

xxvrii. 

With tones like music of a lyre, 

Continuous, piercing, low. 
The sovran lips began to speak. 

Spoke on in liq\iid flow ; 
It scem'd the distant ocean's voice. 

Brought near and shaped to speech. 
But breathing with a sense beyond 

What words of man may reach. 
21 



I 374 JOHN STERLING. 


XXIX. 


XXXVI. 


" Weak child ! Not I the puny power 


With lull'd and peaceful sense the youth 


Thy wish would have me be, 


Upon the marble floor 


A rose-leaf floating: with the wind 


Reclined his head, nor wist he how 


Upon a summer sea. 


His bosom's pangs were o'er. 


If such thou need'st, go range the fields, 


Before the statue's graven base 


And hunt the gilded fly, 


He sank in happy rest. 


And when it mounts above thy head, 


But visions plain as noonday truth 


Then lay thee down and die. 


Came swiftly o'er his breast. 


XXX. 


XXXVII. 


The spells which rule in earth and stars 


For in the unmoving body's trance, 


Each mightiest thought that lives, 


When ear and eye are still, 


Are stronger than the kiss a child 


The mind propiietic wakes and yearns, 


In sudden fancy gives. 


And moulds the unconscious will ; 


They cannot change, or fail, or fade, 


The silent sleeper's heart is near 


Nor deign o'er aught to sway 


The steadfast heart of all. 


Too weak to suifer and to strive, 


And sights to outward view denied 


And tired while still 'tis day. 


Obey the spirit's call. 


XXXI. 


xxxviii. 


" And thou with better wisdom learn 


The radiant goddess changed her look 


The ancient lore to scan, 


Of clear and mild control : 


Which tells that first in ocean's breast 


A gloomy fury seem'd she now, 


My rule o'er all began ; 


A tyrant o'er the soul. 


And know that not in breathless noon 


With furrow'd face and deadly glance 


Upon the glassy main 


Like storm she swept away. 


The power was born that taught the world 


And still the minstrel saw the fiend 


To hail her endless reign. 


Pursuing swift her prey. 


XXXII. 


XXXIX. 


" The winds were loud, the waves were high. 


And now she reac'n'd the chamber fair, 


In drear eclipse the sun 


The ancient home's recess. 


Was crouch'd within the caves of heaven. 


Where wearied Myrto lay asleep 


And light had scarce begun. 


In dreamy restlessness. 


The earth's green front lay drown'd below 


The lover saw the grisly sprite 


And Death and Chaos fought 


Beside her couch appear. 


O'er all the tumult vast of things 


And but for power that held him fast 


Not yet to severance brought. 


He would have shriek'd in fear. 


XXXIII. 


XL. 


""Twas then that spoke the fateful voice, 


The thoughts within the virgin heart 


And mid the huge uproar. 


Took shapes that he could spell. 


Above the dark I sprang to life, 


Like pictures visible and clear. 


A good unhoped before. 


The maiden's tale they tell ; 


My tresses waved along the sky, 


And doubt is there, and pride, and love 


And stars leap'd out around, 


In fluctuating stir. 


And earth beneath my feet arose, 


And many a memory of him. 


And hid the pale profound. 


And songs he framed for her. 


XXXIV. 


XLT. 


" A lamp amid the night, a feast 


The fair brow quivers fast and cfl, 


That ends the strife of war ; 


The smooth lips work and wane, 


To wearied mariners a port. 


And hand, and check, and bosom thrill, 


To fainting limbs a car; 


And writhe as if in pain ; 


To exiled men the friendly roof, 


And then in wan dismay she wakes. 


To mourning hearts the lay ; 


And sees beside her bed 


To him who long has roam'd by night 


The spectral ghastliness whose gaze 


The sudden dawn of day ; 


Fills all the air with dread. 


XXXT. 


XLII. 


"All these are mine, and mine the bliss 


She starts, and screams — Oh ! spare me, spare ! 


That visits breasts in wo, 


I know thy torments well. 


And fills with wine the cup that once 


To punish fierce insatiate pride 


With tears was made to flow. 


Thou coniest to me from hell. 


Nor question thou the help that comes 


Forgive, beloved ! return from death ! 


From Aphrodite's hand ; 


And soon thou shalt avow. 


For madness dogs the bard who doubts 


That slie whose scorn was once so cold 


Whate'er the gods command." 


Can love no less than thou. 



JOHN STERLING. 375 


XLIII. 


By Valleys dank, and river's brim, 


" But, oh ! dark demon, if in vain 


Through corn-clad fields and wizard groves. 


I pray the gods for aid. 


O'er dazzling tracks and hollows dim. 


Swift let me join my vanish'd love 


One spirit roves. 


In thy domain of shade ; 




And take these horrid eyes away, 


The broad-helm'd oak-tree's endless growth, 


So pitiless and hard. 


The mossy stone tliat crowns the hill, 


I cannot bear the looks that oft 


The violet's breast, to gazers loath, 


j I bent upon the bard." 


In sunshine thrill. 


XI.IV. 


A joy from hidden paradise 


She turn'd and hid her tearful face, 


Is rippling down the shiny brooks, 


And si'^hs convulsive rose, 


With beauty like the gleams of eyes 


And broke the charm that chain'd the youth 


In tenderest looks. 


In motionless repose. 




But still with waking ear he caught 


Where'er the vision's boundaries glance. 


The groans of Myrto's pain, 


Existence swells with teeming power. 


For she herself before him lay 


And all illumined earth's expanse 


Within the sacred fane. 


Inhales the hour. 


XLY. 


. Not sands, and rocks, and seas immense. 


He clasp'd her quick, and held her close 


And vapours thin, and halls of air; 


Upon his bounding breast, 


Not these alone, with kiudrcd glance. 


With tears and kisses warni'd her cheek, 


The splendour share. 


And knew that he was blest. 


The fly his jocund round inweaves. 


And now the maid forgiveness ask'd, 


ji Now upward look'd and smiled, 
And, firmlier knit by sorrow past, 
Their hearts were reconciled. 


With choral strain the birds salute 


The voiceful flocks, and nothing grieves. 




And naught is mute. 


XLVI. 


In man, morn ! a loftier good, 


The golden sun sublime arose, 


With conscious blessing, fills the soul. 


And fiil'd the shrine with day, 


A life by reason understood. 


The earth in gladness opcn'd wide, 


Which metes the whole. 


And green the valley lay ; 
Serenely brigUt the goddess glow'd 
Amid the purpled air, 


With healthful pulse, and tranquil fire. 
Which plays at ease in every limb. 

His thoughts uncheck'd to heaven aspire, 
Reveal'd in him. 


And look'd with gracious eyes beniga 


On those adoring there. 






To thousands tasks of fruitful hope 


• — « 


With skill against his toil he bends, 




And finds his work's determined scope 


HYMNS OF A HERMIT. 


Where'er he wends. 


HYMN I. 


From earth, and earthly toil and strife, 


SwKT^T morn ! from countless cups of gold 


To deathless aims his love may rise. 


Thou liftest reverently on high 


Each dawn may wake to better life. 


More incense fine than earth can hold, 


With purer eyes. 


To fill the sky. 


Such grace from thee, God ! be ours. 


One interfusion wide of love 


Renew'd with every morning's ray. 


j ^ Thine airs and odours moist ascend. 


And freshening still, with added flowers. 


And, raid the azure depths above, 


Each future day. 


i With light they blend. 


To man is given one primal star ; 


1 The lark, by his own carol blest. 


One day-spring's beam has dawn'd below. 


1 From thy green harbours eager springs ; 


From thine our inmost glories are. 


And his large heart in little breast 


With thine we glow. 


Exulting sings. 


Like earth, awake, and warm, and bright 


1 On lands and seas, on fields and woods, 


With joy the spirit moves and burns ; 


And collage roofs, and ancient spires, 


So up to thee, Fount of Light ! 


morn ! thy gaze creative broods, 


Our light returns. 


While night retires. 






HYMN 11. 


' Aloft the mountain ridges beam 


Thou who strength and wisdom sheddest 


Above their quiet steeps of gray; 


O'er all tiiy countless works below, 


i The eastern clouds with glory stream. 


And harmony and beauty spreadest 


And vital day. 


On lands unmoved, and seas that flow ! 



376 



JOHN STERLING. 



From grains and motes to spheres uncounted, 
From deep beneath to suns above, 

My gaze with awe and joy has mounted. 
And found in all thy ordering love. 

The fly around mc smoothly flitting, 

The lark that hymns the morning star, 
The swan on crystal water sitting, 

The eagle hung in skies afar — 
To all their cleaving wings thou givest. 

Like those that bear the seraph's flight ; 
In all, O perfect Will ! thou livest, 

For all hast oped thy world of light. 

The grass that springs beside the fountain. 

The silver waves that sparkle there. 
The trees that robe the shadowing mountain, 

And, high o'er all, the limpid air — 
Amid the vale each lowly dwelling. 

Whose hearths with sweet religion shine, 
In measure all things round are swelling 

With tranquil being's force divine. 

And deep and vast beyond our wonder. 

The links of power that bind the whole, 
While day, and dusk, and breeze, and thunder. 

And life and death unceasing roll. 
While all is wheel'd in endless motion, 

Tlrou changest not, upholding all ; 
And, lifting man in pure devotion, 

On Thee thou teachest him to call. 

To him, thy child, thyself revealing, 

He sees what all is meant to be ; 
From him thy secret not concealing. 

Thou bidd'st his will aspire to Thee. 
And so we own in thy creation 

An image painting all thou art ; 
And, crov^'ning all the revelation. 

Thy loftiest work, a human heart. 

The will, the love, the sunlike reason. 

Which thou hast made the strength of man. 
May ebb and flow through day and season. 

And oft may mar their seeming plan; 
But Thou art here to nerve and fashion 

With better hopes our world of care. 
To calm each base and lawless passion, 

And so the heavenly life repair. 

In all the track of earth-born ages. 

Each day displays thy guidance clear, 
And, best divined by holiest sages. 

Makes every child in part a seer. 
Thy laws are bright with purest glory, 

To us thou givest congenial eyes. 
And so, in earth's unfolding story. 

We read thy truth that fills the skies. 

But mid thy countless forms of being 

One shines supreme o'er all beside, 
And man, in all thy wisdom seeing, 

In Him reveres a sinless guiile. 
In Him alone, no longer shrouded 

By mist that dims all meaner things, 
Thou dwell'st, O God ! unvoil'd, uui louded, 

And fearless peace thy presence brings. 



Then teach my heart, celestial Brightness ! 

To know that Thou art hid no more. 
To sun my spirit's dear-bought whiteness 

Beneath thy raj's, and upward soar. 
In all that is, a law unchanging 

Of Truth and Love may I behold. 
And own, mid thought's unbounded ranging. 

The timeless One proclaim'd of old ! 

HYMN III. 
Time more than earthly o'er this hour prevails. 

While thus I stand beside the newly dead ; 
My heart is raised in awe, in terror quails 

Before these relics, whence the life is fled. 

That face, so well beloved, is senseless now. 
And lies a shrunken mask of common clay; 

No more shall thought inspire the pulseless brow, 
Or laughter round the mouth keep holiday. 

In vain affection yearns to own as man 

This clod turn'd over by the plough of death • 

The sharpen'd nose, the frozen eyes we scan. 
And wondering think the heap had human breath. 

An hour ago its lightest looks or throbs 
Impell'd in me the bosom's ample tide ; 

Its farewell words awaken'd sighs and sobs. 
To me more vivid seem'd than all beside. 

Now not a worm is crawling o'er the earth. 
But shows than this an impulse more divine; 

And, wandering lost in stunn'd reflection's dearth, 
I only feel what total loss is mine. 

Cold hand, I touch thee ! Perlsh'd friend ! I know 
What years of mutual joy are gone with thee ; 

And yet from these benumb'd remains there flow 
Calm thoughts that lirst with chasten'd hopes 
agree. 

How strange is death to life ! and yet how sure 
The law which dooms each living thing to die I 

Whate'er is outward cannot long endure. 
And all that lasts eludes the subtlest eye. 

Because the eye is only made to spell 

The grosser garb and failing husk of things; 

The vital strengths and streams that inlier dwell. 
Our faith divines amid their secret springs. 

The stars will sink as fade the lamps of earth, 
The earth be lost as vapour seen no more. 

And -all around that seems of oldest birth. 
Abides one destined day — and all is o'er. 

Himalah's piles, like heaps of autumn leaves. 
Will one day spread along the winds of space, 

And each strong stamp of man the world receives 
Will flit like steps in sand, without a trace. 

Yet something still will somewhere needs abide 
Of all whose being e'er has fill'd our thought; 

In diflferent shapes to other worlds may glide. 
But still must live as more than empty naught. 

The trees decay'd, their parent soil will feed, [first: 
Whence trees may grow more fair than grew the 

To worlds destroy'd, so worlds may still succeed. 
And still the earliest may have been the worst. 



JOHN STERLING. 



377 



Thus, never desperate, muse believing men ; 

But what, O Power divine ! shall men become? 
This pale memorial meets my gaze again, 

And grief a moment bids my hopes be dumb. 

Not thus, O God ! desert us ! Rather I 

Should sink at once to unremembering clay, 

And close my sight on thy translucent sky, 
Than yield my soul to death a helpless prey ; 

Oh ! rather bear beyond the date of stars 

All torments heap'd that nerve and soul can feel, 

Than but one hour believe destruction mars 
Without a hope the life our breasts reveal. 

Bold is the life and deep and vast in man, 

A flood of being pour'd imcheck'd from Thee ; 

To Thee rcturn'd by thine eternal plan, 

When tried and train'd thy will unveil'd to see. 

The spirit leaves the body's wondrous frame, 
That frame itself a world of strength and skill ; 

The nobler inmate new abodes will clahn, 
In every change to Thee aspiring still. 

Although from darkness born, to darkness fled, 
We know that light beyond surrounds the whole ; 

The man survives, though the weird-corpse be dead. 
And He who dooms the flesh, redeems the soul. 

riYMN IV. 
The stream of life from fountains flows, 

Conce^l'd by sacred woods and caves : 
From crag to dell uncheck'd it goes. 
And, hurrying fast from where it rose, 

In foam and flash exulting raves. 

But straight below the torrent's leap, 

Serenely bright its effluence lies, 
And waves that tlumder'd down the steep 
Are hush'd in quiet, mute and deep. 

Reflecting rock, and trees, and skies. 

And mid the pool, disturb'd yet clear, 
The noisy gush that feeds it still 

Is seen again descending sheer, 

A cataract within the mere, 
As bright as down the hill. 

A living picture, smooth and true, 
Of headlong fight and restless power, 

Whose burst for ever feeds anew 

The lake of fresh and silver dew 

That paints and drinks the stormy shower. 

So Thought, with crystal mirror, shows 
Our human joy, and strife, and pain ; 
And ghostly dreams, and passion's woes. 
The tide of failures, hates, and foes, 
Are softly figured there again. 

Do Thou, who pourcst forth our days. 

With all their floods of life divine. 
Bestow thy Spirit's peaceful gaze. 
To still the surge those tumults raise. 
And make thy calm of being mine ! 

HYMN V. 
Etehxai. Mind! Creation's Light and Lord! 
Thou trainest niim to love thy perfect will. 
By love to know thy truth's obscurest word, 
And so his years with hallow'd life to fill ; 
48 



To own in all things round thy law's accord, 

Which bids all hope be strong to vanquish ill ; 
Illumined thus by thy diffusive ray, 
The darkened world and soul are bright with day. 

In storm, and flood, and all decays of time. 
In hunger, plagues, and man-devouring war; 

In all the boundless tracts of inward crime — 
In selfish hates, and lusts that deepliest mar, 

In lazy dreams that clog each task sublime, 
In loveless doubts of truth's uusetting star ; 

In all — thy Spirit will not cease to brood 

With vital strength, unfolding all to good. 

The headlong cataract and tempest's roar, 

The rage of seas, and earthquake's hoarse dismay, 

The crush of empire, sapp'd by tears and gore, 
A nd shrieks of hearts their own corruption's prey ; 

All sounds of death enforce thy righteous lore. 
In smoothest flow thy being's truth obey, 

And, heard in ears from passion's witchery free, 

One endless music make — a hymn to Thee ! 

But most, God! the inward eyes of thought 
Discern thy laws in all that works within ; 

The conscious will, by hard experience taught. 
Divines thy mercy shown by hate of sin : 

x\nd hearts whose peace by shame and grief was 
bought. 
Thy blessings praise, that first in wo begin. 

For still on earthly pain's tormented ground 

Thy love's immortal flowers and fruits abound. 

Fair sight it is, and medicinal for man, 

To see thy guidance lead the human breast ; 

In life's unopen'd germs behold thy plan, 
Till mid the ripen'd soul it stands confest ; 

From impulse too minute for us to scan, 

Awakening sense with love and purpose blest; 

And through confusion, error, trial, grief. 

Maturing reason, conscience, calm belief. " 

This to have known, my soul, be thankful thou ! — 
This clear, ideal form of endless good. 

Which casts around the adoring learner's brow 
The ray that marks man's holiest brotherhood ; 

Thus e'en from guilt's deep curse and slavish vow. 
And dreams whereby the lightwas long withstood, 

Thee, Lord ! whose mind is rule supreme to all, 

Unveif d we see, and hail thy wisdom's call. 

TIYMN' VI. 
Can man. O God ! the tale of man repeat. 

Nor feel his bosom heave with livelier bound ] 
Through all we are the swelling pulse must beat 

At thought of all we are, of all things round: 
Our inmost selves the straining vision meet. 

And memory wakes from slumber's cave pro- 
And, like a rock upon a sunny plain, [found: 

The past amid thy light is seen again. 

Ah ! little spherfi of rosy childhood's hour. 
Itself so weak, and yet foreshowing all ! 

Unopen'd world of self-evolving power. 
That now but hears the instant's tiny call! 

Within its dewdrop life, its folded flower, 

Distress and strife the thoughtless heart enthrall ; 

And stirrings big with man's unmeasured hope 

Have scarcely strength against one pang to cope. 
2i 3 



378 



JOHN STERLING. 



Bewildering, cloudy dawn ! then pass from view 
The first faint lines of mortal being's course ; 

Then wakes the will, and fiercely grasps a clue, 
And wondering feels it snapp'd by headlong force, 

And sad and weeping grows a child anew, 

Till joy comes back from life's unfailing source — 

New aims, new thoughts, new pa -sions take their 
turn, 

And still the extinguish'd flame again will burn. 

What gropings blind to leave the common way ! 

What yearnings vain that find no end reveal'd ! 
What hopeless war, and feeling's idle play ! 
What wounds that pierce tarough pride's phan- 
tasmal play ] 
A thousand objects woo'd and thrown away ! 

And idols dear that no response will yield ! 
And so within one bosom's living cell 
A fiendish foe and helpless victim dwell. 

Oh,gorgeousdreams,and wing-borne flight of youth! 

That thinks by scorning earth to win the skies; 
Forebodings dim of visionary truth, 

That like a beast pursued before us flies ; 
Insane delight in monstrous forms uncouth, [rise; 

That thence perchance some prophet ghost may 
Blind love of light, and craving hate of rest I — 
How far our strangest world is in the breast ! 

Abounding pictures, bright with morn and joy, 
Of all the endless beings round us linown, 

Bewilder, vex, intoxicate, and cloy, — 

A land of bliss how near, yet not our own ! 

All things so fair, each sense they needs employ, 
Yet mid them all the spirit wastes alone ; 

So many, lovely, large, and sweet they seem. 

As if to prove the whole is only dream. 

Fair visions all ! and, mid the train of things, 
How strange the sway the fairest shapes have won! 

From them distraction, folly, rapture springs. 
And life's true rapture seems but now begun, 

For mad we seek the joy that passion brings 
To hearts by inmost treacheries all undone, 

Though love's concealing veil is dark and stern, 

Nor e'er did eyes profane its mystery learn. 

So forward roll the years with wo and bliss. 
Mid act, and deed, and thought, and lone despair ; 

And 'twixt the arduous That and easy This, 
We fain the trial more than man can bear. 

Still Conscience stabs and l)leeds; Temptation's kiss 
Still sucks our purest life, and taints the air ; 

His feet with blood, his own and others', red, 

Ambition climbs the unstable mountain-head. 

But sickening hours and weariness of breath, 
And eyes that cannot brook to see the day, 

And dreams that shuddering hail the name of death, 
And fancies thin subdued by dull decay, — 

All these, O God ! thy servant Conscience saith, 
Are surely sent by Thee — thy word obey ; 

The world of man so bright, and soul so strong, 

To man are shown defaced by human wrong. 

And thus, by inward act and outward led, 

We know the things we are if loosed from thee ; 

How blind as rocks, and weak as branches dead, 
And vain and fierce, to show us nobly free, 



To leave thy paths in desert wilds we fled. 

And hoped no longer thine — our own to be ; 
So sinking down from fancied all to naught, 
One grain of dust was left by misery taught. 

That speck, O Father ! still to thee was dear — 
A living relic capable of good ; [fear, 

And bruised and crush'd by wo, and shame, and 
Arose again from earth, and upright stood. 

Thy spirit still was there, not now severe, 
And fed the yearning heart with loving food, 

Till brave and clear, discerning all the past, 

It knew that peace and hope were gain'd at last. 

Now all confusion spent, and battles o'er, 
Are seen as leading on to endless rest, 

The world obscure and distant now no more, 
With sights of truthful gladness fills the breast; 

And love, so false and foul a name before. 

With countless joys the wounded heart has blest: 

And thus, O God ! thy child serene and bold 

Goes forth to toils heroic manifold ! 



THE DEAREST. 

On ! that from far-away mountains 

Over the restless waves. 
Where bubble-enchanted fountains, 

Rising fronr jewell'd caves, 
I could call a fairy bird, 
Who, whene'er thy voice was heard. 

Should come to thee, dearest ! 

He should have violet pinions. 

And a beak of silver white. 
And should bring from the sun's dominions 

Eyes that would give thee light. 
Thou should'st see that he was borii 
In a land of gold and morn. 

To be thy servant, dearest ! 

Oft should he drop on thy tresses 

A pearl, or diamond stone, 
And would yield to thy light caresses 

Blossoms in Eden grown. 
Round thy path his wings would shower 
Now a gem, and now a flower, 

And dewy odours, dearest ! 

He should fetch from his eastern island 

The songs tiiat the Peris sing. 
And when evening is clear and silent. 

Spells to thy ear would bring. 
And with his mysterious strain 
Would entrance thy weary brain, 

Love's own music, dearest ! 

No Phrenix, alas ! will hover, 

Sent from the morning star; 
And thou must take of thy lover 

A gift not brought so far: 
Wanting bird, and gem, and song, 
Ah ! receive and treasure long 

A heart that loves thee, dearest • 



JOHN STERLING. 



37J 



JOAN D'ARC. 



Mant a lucid star sublime 
In the vault of earthly time ; 
Many a deed, and name, and face, 
Is a lamp of heavenly grace, 
And, to us that walk, below, 
Cheers with hope the vale of wo. 
Lo ! the great aerial host. 
Whom our bodily eyes have lost, 
To the spirit reappear 
With their glory shining here ; 
Bearded saints from holy cell ; 
Warriors who for duty fell ; 
Thoughtful devotees, in youth 
Spell-bound by a glance of Truth. 
And to whom all else has been 
But a thin and changeful scene ; 
All to whom the many shows 
That the years of earth disclose, 
Are but gleams, for moments given, 
Of an ever-present heaven. 

II. 

High amid the dead who give 
Better life to those that live. 
See where shines the peasant Maid, 
In her hallow'd mail array 'd. 
Whom the lord of peace and war 
Sent as on a flaming car, 
From her father's fold afar. 
Her's the calm supernal faith. 
Braving ghastliest looks of death ; 
For, O loveliest woodland flower 
Ever bruised in stormiest hour ! 
Guardian saints have nerved thy soul 
Battling nations to control ; 
And the vision-gifted eye. 
That, communing with the sky. 
Sank when human steps were nigh. 
Now, in face of fiend and man, 
Must the camp and city scan. 
And outspeed the rushing van. 

III. 

Pause not, gentle maiden, now ! 

Awful hands have mark'd thy brow ; 

And, in lonely hours of prayer, 

Mid the leafy forest air. 

Boundless powers, eternal eyes. 

Looks that made old prophets wise. 

Have inspired thy solitude 

W'ith a rapt, heroic mood, 

And have taught thy humble weakness 

AH the strength that dwells in meekness; 

And with how devouring sway, 

Right, oppress'd by long delay. 

Bursts out in a judgment-day. 

Thus thy heart is high and strong. 

Swelling like cherubic song. 

For thou art so low and small. 

It must be the Lord of All 

AV'lio can thus a world appal. 

Race and country, daily speech. 

That makes each man dear to each. 



Friends and home, and love of mother, 

Grandsire's grave, and slaughter'd brother 

Fields familiar, native sky. 

Voices these that on thee cry 

Winds pursue with vocal might, 

Stars will not be dumb by night. 

And the dry leaf on the ground 

Has a tongue of pealing sound, 

Loud from God commanding thee. 

Go, and set thy nation free ! 

IV. 

Battle's blast is fiercely blowing. 
Clarions sounding, coursers bounding. 
Pennons o'er the tumult flowing. 
Host on host the eye astounding 
Wave on wave that sea confounding. 
And in headlong fury going. 
Mounted kingdoms wildly dashing. 
Lance to lance, and steed to steed ; 
Now must haughtiest champions bleed. 
And a myriad swords are flashing. 
Loud on shield and helmet clashing; 
Ne'er had ruin nobler spoil 
On this broad and bloody soil. 
As the storms a forest crushing, 
Oaks of thousand winters grind. 
So the iron whirl is rushing. 
Shouts before and groans behind. 
Still amid the dead and dying. 
All in shatter'd ridges lying, 
Pride, revenge, and youthful daring. 
And their cause and country's name, 
Drive them on with sweep unsparing, — 
Naught for life, and all for fame ! 
Still above the surge of battle 
Breathes the trump its fatal gale. 
And the hollow tambours rattle 
Chorus to the deadly tale. 
Still is Joan the first in glory. 
Still she sways the maddening fight, 
Kindling all the flames of story, 
With an unimaglned might. 
Squadrons furious close around her, 
Still her blade is waving free ; 
Sword nor lance avails to wound her 
Terror of a host is she. 
Heavenly guardian, maiden wonder ! 
Long shall France resound the day 
When thou camest clad in thunder. 
Blasting thy tremendous way. 

V. 

Yet, who closer mark'd the face 
That o'erruled the battle place. 
Much had marvell'd to discern 
Looks more calm and soft than stern. 
For no flush of hot ambition 
Stain'd her soul's unearthly mission. 
Raging hate, and stubborn pride. 
Warlike cunning, life-long tried. 
Low before that presence died. 
For within her sainted heart 
Naught of these had formed a part. 
God had will'd the land to free ; 
Handmaiden of God was she. 



380 



JOHN STERLING. 



Ne'er so smooth a brow before 
Battle's darkening ensign wore; 
And 'twas still the gentle eye 
Wont when evening veil'd the sky, 
In the whispering shade to see 
Angels haunt the lonely tree. 

TI. 

Loud o'er Orleans' rampart swells 
Music from her steeple bell, 
Loud to France the triumph tells ; 
And the vehement trumpets blending, 
With the shouts to heaven ascending. 
Hail the maid whom seraphs bless. 
Consecrated Championess ! 
Sound from heart to heart that tingles, 

Echoing on without a pause; 
Wliiie her name like sunshine mingles 

With each breath a nation draws. 
All the land, with joy on fire. 

Blazes round the festal march, 
Till they meet the priestly choir 

Under Rheims' cathedral arch. 
Ancient towers, and cloisters hoary. 

Gleam and thrill above the king ; 
Beauteous rite and blazon'd story 

On his crown their lustre fling, 
With an old resurgent glory. 

Laws and freedom hallowing. 
Therefore, baron, count, and peer. 
Priest and dame no more in fear, 
All assemble wondering here ; 
And a sea of common men, 
Feasting all vfith greedy ken. 
Now behold, in pomp appear. 
Smiling, not without a tear, 
Joan, the dearest sight to see. 
First of all the chivalry. 
Bearing low her banner'd spear. 

Tir. 

Dizzy with their full delight. 
All disperse ere comes the night. 
Charles and all his train are met. 

Revelling in royal hall ; 
Shield and pennon o'er them set. 

Many a doubtful fight recall ; 
And the throng'd and clanging town 
For the rescued land's renown, 

Keeps a sudden carnival. - 
Ask ye, where the while is Joan 1 
She within the minster lone, 
To the silent altar steals, 
And before it trembling kneels; 
And amid the shadows dim. 
Faithfully she prays to Him 
Who his light in dark reveals. 
Now again her home she sees, 
Domremy with all its trees. 
Where the ancient beech is growing, 
And tlie haunted fount is flowing, 
And the Meuse with equal sound 
Breathes its quiet all around. 
Won again by weeping prayer, 
Lo ! her loved protectors there, 
Catherine mild, and Margaret fair. 



Over them a light is streaming. 
On their gracious foreheads beaming, 
Eflluence from an orb unseen. 
To which heaven is but a screen ; 
All our human sight above. 
Not beyond our human love: 
And from thence she hears a voice 
That can make the dead rejoice; 
— " Give not way to pride or fear, 
For the end of all is near !" 

Till. 

End with many tears implored ! 

'T is the sound of home restored ! 

And as mounts the angel show. 

Gliding with them she would go. 

But again to stoop below, 

And, return'd to green Lorraine, 

Be a shepherd child again. 

Now the crown of Charles is won, 

Now the work of God is done. 

Angel wings, away ! away ! 

Lift her home by close of day. 

And upon her mother's breast 

Give her weary spirit rest. 

Then, with vernal thickets nigh. 

And the waters glistening by, 

In smooth valleys let her keep 

Undescried her quiet sheep. 

This the promise to the maid 

By the heavenly voice convey'd : 

Oh ! how differing far the doom ; 

Oh ! how close the bloody tomb ; 

Thus men hear, but not discern. 

What Heaven wills that they should learn ; 

And the time and deed alone 

Make the eternal meaning known. 

IX. 

Wail, ye fields and woods of France ! 
Rivers, dim your sunny glance ! 
All of strong, and fair, and old 
That the eyes of men behold, 
Mountain gray, and hermit dell. 
Sun and stars unquencliable. 
Founts whose kisses woo the lea. 
Endless, many-flooded sea. 
All that witnesses a power 
To o'erawe the importunate hour. 
Human works devoutly wrought 
To unfold enduring thought. 
Shrines that seem the reverend birth 
Of an elder, holier earth. 
Mourn above your altars dear, 
Quaking wit'n no godless fear ! 
And, thou deepest heart of man. 
Home of love ere sin began. 
Faith prophetic, Mercy mild, 
Patriot passion undefiled. 
Mourn with righteous grief the day 
W^lien was hush'd your choral lay 
When the hovering guardian band 
Of the liberated land. 
Radiant kings, were seen to wane 
And were eyeless cloud again ; 
When the foe, who far recoifd. 
By a maiden's presence foil'd. 



JOHN STERLING. 



381 



JRush'd again in grim despair 
From his burning, bloody lair, 
And made prey of her whose word 
Was so oft a living sword. 



Woful end, and conflict long ! 
Stress of agonizing wrong ! 
In the black and stiHing cell, 
Watch'd by many a sentinel, 
Not a saint is with her now. 
Beaming light from locks and brow ; 
No melodious angel calls 
Through the huge unshaken walls; 
But the brutal sworder jeers, 
Making merry at her tears. 
And the priests her faith assail 
Til! it fears, but cannot fail. 
So the hopeful cheer she wore 
Like a robe of state before — 
Brancii, and leaf, and summer flower, 
Perish from her hour by hour. 
But the firm sustaining root 
Dies not with the feathery shoot. 
So survives her soul — but oh ! 
Fierce the closing gust of wo, 
When beneath the eyes of day 
Thousands gather round her way, 
And a host in steel array ; 
When the captive, wan and lowly, 
Walks beside her jailer slowly. 
Till before the expectant pile 
Weak she stands, with saddest smile ; 
And her steady tones reply 
To the cowl'd tormentor's lie — 
" God commanded me to go, 
And I went, as well ye know. 
To destroy my country's foe !" 
While she clasps the saving rood 
Fiercer swells the murderers' mood. 
Till, through rising smoke and flame 
Comes no sound but Jesu's name 
Jesu — Jesu — oft renew'd, 
Oft by stifling pain subdued. 
Soon that cry is heard no more, 
And the people, mute before. 
Groan to heaven, for all is o'er. 

XJ. 

Word untrue ! That All can ne'er 
Have its close and destiny here. 
All that can be o'er on earth 
Is the shifting cloudland's birth ; 
Dream and shadow, mist and error, 
Joy unblest, and nightmare terror — 
Passions blent in ghostly play, 
Twinkling of a gusty day — 
Glittering sights that vaguely roll. 
Catch the eye, but mock the soul — 
Griefs and hopes ill understood, 
Tyrants of man's weaker mood, 
Folly's loved, portentous brood — 
These, and all the aims they cherish, 
In their native tomb may perish. 
Phantoms sliapelcss. huge, and wild, 
That beset the graybeard child — 



Loud usurpers, fierce and mean, 
Ruling an unstable scene ; 
Blinding hate, and gnawing lust, 
Lies that cheat our wiser trust, 
'I'hese may cleave to formless dust; 
But the earth, oppress'd so long 
By the heavy steps of wrong, 
Sends an awful voice on high 
With a keen accusing cry. 
And appeals to him whose lore 
Tells — the All can ne'er be o'er. 

XII. 

Faithful maiden, gentle heart ! 
Thus our thoughts of grief depart; 
Vanishes the place of death ; 
Sounds no more thy painful breath ; 
O'er the unbloody stream of Meuse 
Melt the silent evening dews. 
And along the banks of Loire 
Rides no more the arm'd destroyer. 
But thy native waters flow 
Through a land unnamed below, 
And thy woods their verdure wave 
In the vale beyond the grave, 
Where the deep-dyed western sky 
Looks on all with tranquil eye, 
And on distant dateless hills 
Each high peak with radiance fills. 
There amid the oak-tree shadow, 
And o'er all the beech crown'd meadow, 
Those for whom the earth must mourn 
In their peaceful joy sojourn. 
Join'd with fame's selected few, 
Those whom rumor never knew, 
But no less to conscience true : 
Each grave prophet, soul sublime, 
Pyramids of elder time ; 
Bards with hidden fire possess'd, 
Flashing from a wo-worn breast ; 
Builders of man's better lot. 
Whom their hour acknowledged not. 
Now with strength appeased and pure 
Feel whate'er they loved is sure. 
These and such as these the train, 
Sanctified by former pain. 
Mid those softest yellow rays 
S[)hered afar from mortal praise ; 
Peasant, matron, monarch, child. 
Saint undaunted, hero mild. 
Sage whom pride has ne'er beguiled ; 
And with them the champion maid 
Dwells in that serenest glade ; 
Danger, toil, and grief no more 
Fret her life's unearthly shore; 
Gentle sounds that will not cease, 
Breathe but peace, and ever peace ; 
While above the immortal trees, 
Michael and his host she sees 
Clad in diamond panoplies ; 
And more near, in tenderer light, 
Honoured Catherine, Margaret bright, 
Agnes whom her loosened hair 
Robes like woven amber air — 
Sisters of her childhood come 
To her last eternal home. 



382 



JOHN STERLING. 



ALFRED THE HARPER. 

Dark fell the night, the watch was set, 

The host was idly spread. 
The dames around their watchfires met, 

Caroused, and fiercely fed. 
They feasted all on English food, 

And quaff'd the English ale, 
Their hearts leapt up with burning blood 

At each old Norseman tale. 

The chiefs beneath a tent of leaves. 

And Guthrum, king of all, 
Devour'd the flesh of England's beeves, 

And laugh'd at England's fall. 
Each warrior proud, each Danish earl. 

In mail and wolf-skin clad. 
Their bracelets white with plunder'd pearl, 

Their eyes with triumph mad. 

A mace beside each king and lord 

Was seen, with blood bestain'd ; 
From golden cups upon the board 

Their kindling wine they drain'd. 
Ne'er left their sad storm-beaten coast 

Sea-kings so hot for gore ; 
Mid Selwood's oaks so dreadful host 

Ne'er burnt a track before. 

From Humber-land to Severn-land, 

And on to Tamar stream, 
Where Thames makes green the towery strand, 

Where Medway's waters gleam, — 
With hands of steel and mouths of flame 

They raged the kingdom through ; 
And where the Norseman sickle came, 

No crop but hunger grew. 

They loaded many an English horse 

With wealth of cities fair ; 
They dragg'd from many a father's corse 

The daughter by her hair. 
And English slaves, and gems and gold, 

Were gather'd round the feast; 
Till midnight in their woodland hold, 

Oh ! never that riot ceased. 

In stalk'd a warrior tall and rude 

Before the strong sea-kings ; 
"Ye lords and earls of Odin's brood, 

Without a harper sings. 
He seems a simple man and poor. 

But well he sounds the lav, 
And well, ye Norseman chiefs, be sure, 

Will ye the song repay." 

In trod the bard with keen, cold look. 

And glanced along the board, 
That with the sliout and war-cry shook, 

Of many a Danish lord. 
But thirty brows, inflamed and stern. 

Soon bent on him their gaze. 
While calm he gazed, as if to learn 

Who chief deserved his praise. 

Loud Guthrum spake. — "Nay, gaze not thus 

Thou harper weak and poor ! 
By Thor ! who bandy looks with us, 

Must worse than looks endure. 



Sing high the praise of Denmark's host. 
High praise each dauntless earl ; 

The brave who stun this English coast 
With war's unceasing whirl." 

The harper sat upon a block, 

Heap'd up with wealthy spoil. 
The wool of England's helpless flock, 

Whose blood had stain'd the soil. 
He sat and slowly bent his head. 

And touch'd aloud the string; 
Then raised his face, and boldly said, 

"Hear thou my lay, O king! 

" High praise from all whose gift is song 

To him in slaughter tried. 
Whose pulses beat in battle strong, 

As if to meet his bride. 
High praise from every mouth of man 

To all who boldly strive. 
Who fall where first the fight began. 

And ne'er go back alive. 

"But chief his fame be quick as fire. 

Be wide as is the sea. 
Who dares in blood and pangs expire, 

To keep his country free. 
To such, great earls, and mighty king ! 

Shall praise in heaven belong ; 
The starry harps their praise shall ring. 

And chime to mortal song. 

" Fill high your cups, and swell the shout, 

At famous Regnar's name ! 
Who sank his host in bloody rout, 

When he to Hiunber came. 
His men were chased, his sons were slain. 

And he was left alone. 
They bound him in an iron chain 

Upon a duHigeon stone. 

" With iron links they bound him fast ; 

With snakes they fill'd the hole, 
That made his flesh their long repast, 

And bit into his soul. 
The brood with many a poisonous fang 

The warrior's heart beset ; 
While still he cursed his foes, and sang 

His fierce but hopeless threat. 

" Great chiefs, why sink in gloom your eyes 1 

Why champ your teeth in pain 1 
Still lives the song though Regnar dies ! 

Fill high your cups again. 
Ye too, perchance, O Norsemen lords ! 

Vv'ho fought and sway'd so long, 
Shall soon but live in minstrel words, 

And owe your names to song. 

" This land has graves by thousands more 

Than that were Regnar lies. 
When conquests ftde, and rule is o'er. 

The sod must close your eyes. 
How soon, who knows? Not chief, nor bard; 

And yet to mc 'tis given. 
To sec your foreheads deeply scarr'd 

And guess the doom of Heaven. 



JOHN STERLING. 383 


" I may not read or when, or how, 


The minstrel took the goblet bright, 


But earls and kings, be sure 


And said, "I drink the wine 


I see a blade o'er every brow. 


To him who owns by justest right 


Where pride now sits secure. 


The cup thou bid'st be mine. 


Fill high the cups, raise loud the strain ! 




When chief and monarch fall. 


"To him your lord, oh shout ye all ! 


Their names in song shall breathe again, 


His meed be deathless praise ! 


And thrill the feastful hall. 


The king who dares not nobly fall, 




Dies basely all his days. 


" Like God's own voice, in after years 


The king who dares not guard his throne, 


Resounds the warrior's fame. 


May curses heap his head ; 


Whose deed his hopeless country cheers, 


But hope and strength, be all his own 


Who is its noblest name. 


Whose blood is bravely shed." 


Drain down, chiefs ! the gladdening bowl ! 




The present hour is yours ; 


" The praise thou speakest," Guthrum said, 


Let death to-morrow take the soul, 


" With sweetness fills mine ear; 


If joy to-day endures." 


For Alfred swift before me fled. 




And left me monarch here. 


Grim sat the chiefs ; one heaved a groan, 


The royal coward never dared 


And one grew pale with dread. 


Beneath mine eye to stand. 


His iron mace was gras])ed by one. 


Oh, would that now this feast he shared, 


By one his wine was shed. 


And saw me rule his land !" 


And Guthrum cried, "Nay, bard, no more 




We hear thy boding lay ; 


Then stern the minstrel rose, and spake, 


Make drunk the song with spoil and gore ; 


And gazed upon the king, — 


Light up the joyous fray !" 


" Not now the golden cup I take, 




Nor more to thee I sing. 


"Quick throbs my brain" — so burst the song — 


Another day, a happier hour, 


" To hear the strife once more. 


Shall bring me here again. 


The mace, the axe, they rest too long; 


The cup shall stay in Guthrum's power 


Earth cries my thirst is sore. 


Till I demand it then." 


More blithel}' twang the strings of bows 




Than strings of harps in glee ; 


The harper turn'd and left the shed, 


Red wounds are lovelier than the rose, 


Nor bent to Guthrum's crown ; 


Or rosy lips to me. 


And one who mark'd his visage said 




It wore a ghastly frown. 


" Oh ! fairer than a field of flowers. 


The Danes ne'er saw that harper more, 


When flowers in England grew. 


For soon as morning rose, 


Would bo the battle's marshall'd powers. 


Upon their camp king Alfred bore, 


The plain of carnage new. 


And slew ten thousand foes. 


With all its deaths before my soul 




The vision rises fair; 
Raise loud the song, and drain the bowl ! 




* • 


I would that I were there ! 






THE POET'S HOME. 


"'Tis sweet to live in honour'd might, 




With true and fearless hand ; 




'Tis sweet to fall in freedom's fight, 


In- the cavern's lonely hall. 


Nor shrink before the brand. 


By the mighty waterfall, 


But sweeter far, when girt by foes. 
Unmoved to meet their frown, 


Lives a spirit shy and still. 


Whom the softeu'd murmurs thrill, 


And count with cheerful thought the woes 


Hoard within the twilight nook, 


That soon shall dash them down." 


Like the music of a brook. 


Loud rang the harp, the minstrel's eye 


Poet ! thus sequester'd dwell, 


Roll'd fiercely rotind the throng; 


In thy fancy's haunted cell. 


It seem'd two crashing hosts were nigh, 


That the floods abroad may be 


Whose shock aroused the song. 


Like a voice of peace to thee. 


A golden cup king Guthrum gave 


While thou giv'st to nature's tone 


To him who strongly play'd ; 


Soul and sweetness all thy own. 


And said, "I won it from the slave 




Who once o'er England sway'd." 


Hear, but, ah ! intrust thee not 




I'o tho waves beyond thy ^rot. 


King Guthrum cried, "'Twas Alfred's own; 


Lest thy low and wizard strain 


Thy song befits the brave; 


Warble through the storm in vain. 


The king who cannot guard his throne 


And thy dying songs deplore 


Nor wine nor song shall have." 

— — . 


Thou must see thy cave no more. 



384 



JOHN STERLING. 



MIRABEAU. 

Not oft has peopled earth sent up 

So deep and wide a groan before, 
As when the word astounded France 

— "The life of Mirabean is o'er !" 
From its one heart a nation wail'd, 

For well the startled sense divined 
A greater power had fled away 

Than aught that now remained behind. 

The scathed and haggard face of will, 

And look so strong with weapon'd thought, 
Had been to many million hearts 

The All between themselves and naught ; 
And so they stood aghast and pale, 

As if to see the azure sky 
Come shattering down, and show beyond 

The black and bare Infinity. 

For he, while all men trembling peer'd 

Upon the Future's empty space, 
Had strength to bid above the void 

The oracle unveil its face ; 
And when his voice could rule no more, 

A thicker weight of darkness fell, 
And tomb'd in its sepulchral vault 

The wearied master of the spell, 

A myriad hands like shadows weak, 

Or stiff and sharp as bestial claws, 
Had sought to steer the fluctuant mass 

That bore his country's life and laws ; 
The rudder felt his giant hand. 

And quailed beneath the living grasp 
That now must drop the helm of fate. 

Nor pleasure's cup can madly clasp. 

France did not reck how fierce a storm 

Of rending passion, blind and grim, 
Had ceased its audible uproar 

When death sank heavily on him ; 
Nor heeded they the countless days 

Of toiling smok% and blasting flame, 
That now by this one fatal hour 

Were summ'd for him as guilt and shame. 

The wondrous life that flow'd so long 

A stream of all commixtures vile, 
Had seem'd for them in morning light 

With gold and crystal waves to smile. 
It roU'd with mighty breadth and sound 

A new creation through the land, 
Then sudden vanish'd into earth, 

And left a barren waste of sand. 

To them at first the world appear'd 

Aground, and lying shipwreck'd there, 
And freedom's folded flag no more 

With dazzling sun-burst filled the air ; 
But 'tis in after years for men 

A sadder and a greater thing. 
To muse upon the inward heart 

Of him who lived the people's king. 

Oh ! wasted strength ! Oh ! light and calm, 
And better hopes so vainly given ! 

Like rain upon the herbless sea 

Poured down b'y too benignant heaven — 



We see not stars unfix'd by winds, 
Or lost in aimless thunder-peals, 

But man's large soul, the star supreme. 
In guideless whirl how oft it reels ! 

The mountain hears the torrent dash, 

But rocks will not in billows run ; 
No eagle's talons rend away 

Those eyes that joyous drink the sun ; 
Yet man, by choice and purpose weak, 

Upon his own devoted head 
Calls down the flash, as if its fires 

A crown of peaceful glory shed. 

Alas ! — yet wherefore mourn 1 The law 

Is holier than a sage's prayer ; 
The godlike power bestow'd on men 

Demands of them a godlike care ; 
And noblest gifts, if basely used. 

Will slernliest avenge the wrong, 
And grind with slavish pangs the slave 

Whom once they made divinely strong. 

The lamp that, mid the sacred cell. 

On heavenly forms its gloiy sheds, 
Untended dies, and in the gloom 

A poisonous vapor glimmering spreads. 
It shines and flares, and reeling ghosts 

Enormous through the twilight swell, 
Till o'er the wither'd world and heart 

Rings loud and slow the dooming knell. 

No more I hear a nation's shout 

Around the hero's tread prevailing. 
No more I hear above his tomb 

A nation's fierce bewilder'd wailing ; 
I stand amid the silent night, 

And think of man and all his wo, 
With fear and pity, grief and awe, 

When I remember Mirabeau. 



LOUIS XV. 

The king with all his kingly train 

Had left his Pompadour behind. 
And forth he rode in Senart's wood. 

The royal beasts of chase to find. 
That day by chance the monarch mused, 

And turning suddenly away, 
He struck alone into a path 

That far from crowds and courtiers lay. 

He saw the pale green shadows play 

Upon the brown untrodden earth ; 
He saw the birds around him flit 

As if he were of peasant birth ; 
He saw the trees that know no king 

But him who bears a woodland axe ; 
He thought not, but he look'd about 

Like one who skill in thinking lacks. 

Then close to him a footstep fell. 
And glad of human sound was he. 

For truth to say he found himself 

A weight from which he fain would flee. 



JOHN STERLING. 



385 



But that which he would ne'er have guess'd 
Before him now most plainly came ; 

The man upon his weary back 
A coffin bore of rudest frame. 

"Why, who art thoul" exclaim'd the king, 

" And what is that I see thee bearl" 
" I am a labourer in the wood. 

And 'tis a coffin for Pierre. 
Close by the royal hunting-lodge 

You may have often seen him toil ; 
But he will never work again, 

And I for him must dig the soil." 

The labourer ne'er had seen the king, 

And this he thought was but a man, 
Who made at first a moment's pause. 

And then anew his talk began : 
" I think I do remember now, — 

He had a dark and glancing eye. 
And I have seen his slender arm 

With wondrous blows the pick-axe ply. 

" Pray tell me friend, what accident 

Can thus have kill'd our good Pierre 1" 
" Oh ! nothing more than usual, sir. 

He died of living upon air. 
'T was hunger kill'd the poor good man, 

Who long on empty hopes relied ; 
He could not pay gabell and tax, 

And feed his children, so he died." 

The man stopp'd short, and then went on, — 

" It is, you know, a common thing ; 
Our children's bread is eaten up 

By courtiers, mistresses, and king." 
The king look'd hard upon the man, 

And afterwards the coffin eyed. 
Then spurr'd to ask of Pompadour, 

How came it that peasants died. 



D .ED ALUS. 

Wail for Dsedalus all that is fairest ! 

All that is tuneful in air or wave ! 
Shapes whose beauty is truest and rarest. 

Haunt with your lamps and spells his grave I 

Statues, bend your heads in sorrow, 

Ye that glance mid ruins old, 
That know not a past, nor expect a morrow 

On many a moonlight Grecian wold ! 

By sculpture cave and speaking river, 
Thee, Dfedalus, oft the Nymphs recall ; 

The leaves with a sound of winter quiver, 
Murmur thy name, and withering fall. 

Yet are thy visions in soul the grandest 
Of all that crowd on the tear-dimm'd eye. 

Though Daedalus thou no more commandest 
New stars to that ever-widening sky. 

Ever thy phantoms arise before us, 
Our loftier brothers, but one in blood ; 

By bed and table they lord it o'er us. 

With looks of beauty and words of good. 
49 



Calmly they show us mankind victorious 
O'er all that's aimless, blind, and base ; 

Their presence has made our nature glorious, 
Unveiling our night's illumined face. 

Thy toil has won them a god-like quiet; 

Thou hast wrought their path to a lovely sphere ; 
Their eyes to peace rebuke ou# riot. 

And shape us a home of refuge here. 

For Daedalus breathed in them his spirit; 

In them their sire his beauty sees : 
We too, a younger brood, inherit 

The gifts and blessing bestow'd on these. 

But ah ! their wise and graceful seeming 
Recalls the more that the sage is gone ; 

Weeping we wake from deceitful dreaming, 
And find our voiceless chamber lone. 

Dsedalus thou from the twilight fleest. 

Which thou with vision hast made so bright; 

And when no more those shapes thou seest. 
Wanting thine eye they lose their light. 

E'en in the noblest of man's creations, 
Those fresh worlds round this old of ours. 

When the seer is gone, the orphan'd nations 
See but the tombs of perish'd powers. 

Wail for Dsedalus, earth and ocean I 

Stars and sun, lament for him ! 
Ages quake, in strange commotion ! 

All ye realms of life, be dim ! 

Wail for Dsedalus, awful voices, 

From earth's deep centre mankind appal ! 

Seldom ye sound, and then death rejoices. 
For he knows that then the mightiest fall. 



THE AGES. 

How swiftly pass a thousand years ! 

And lo ! they all have flovv'd away. 
And o'er the hardening earth appears 

Green pasture mix'd with rocks of gray ; 
And there huge monsters roll and feed. 

Each frame a mass of sullen life; 
Through slimy wastes and woods of reed 

They crawl and tramp, and blend in strife. 

How swiftly pass a thousand years ! 

And o'er the wide and grassy plain, 
A human fonn the prospect cheers. 

The new-sprung lord of earth's ^omain. 
Half-clad in skins he builds the cell. 

Where wife and child create a home ; 
To heaven he feels his spirit swell, 

And owns a might beyond the dome. 

How swiftly pass a thousand years ! 

And lo ! a city and a realm ; 
Its weighty pile a temple rears, 

And walls are bright with sword and helm : 
Each man is lost amid a crowd ; 

Each power unknown now bears a name ; 
And laws, and f(>asts, and songs arc loud. 

And myriads hail their monarch's fame. 
2K 



386 



JOHN STERLING. 



How swiftly pass a thousand years ! 

And now beside the roUing sea, 
"Where many a sailor nimbly steers, 

The ready tribes are bold and free. 
The graceful shrine adorns the hill ; 

The square of council spreads below ; 
Their theatres a people fill, 

And list to thought's impassion'd flow. 

How swiftly pass a thousand years ! 

We live amid a sterner land, 
Where laws ordain'd by ancient seers 

Have train'd the soul to self-command. 
There pride, and policy, and war, 

^Vith haughty fronts are gazing slow. 
And bound at their trumphal car, 

O'ermaster'd kings to darkness go. 

How swiftly pass a thousand years ! 

And chivalry and faith are strong; 
And through devotion's humble tears 

Is seen high help for earthly wrong : 
Fair gleams the cross with mystic light 

Beneath an arch of woven gloom, 
The burgher's pledge of civil right. 

The sign that marks the monarch's tomb. 

How swift the years ! how great the chain 

That drags along our slight to-day ! 
Before that sound returns again 

The present will have stream'd away ; 
And all our world of busy strength 

Will dwell in calmer halls of time. 
And then with joy will own at length. 

Its course is lix'd, its end sublime. 



THE HUSBANDMAN. 

Earth, of man the bounteous mother, 
Feeds him still with corn and wine ; 

He who best would aid a brother, 
Shares with him these gifts divine. 

Many a power within her bosom 
Noiseless, hidden, works beneath ; 

Hence are seed, and leaf, and blossom, 
Golden ear and cluster'd wreath. 

These to swell with strength and beauty. 

Is the royal task of man ; 
Man's a king, his throne is duty, 

Since his work on earth began. 

Bud and b^ifvest, bloom and vintage, 
These, like man, are fruits of earth; 

Stamp'd in clay, a heavenly mintage, 
All from dust receive their birth. 

Barn and milj, and wine-vat's treasures, 
Earthly goods for earthly lives. 

These are nature's ancient pleasures, 
These her child from her derives. 

What the dream, but vain rebelling, 
If from earth we sought to flee ] 

'T is our stored and ample dwelling 
'T is from it the skies we see. 



Wind and frost, and hour and season, 
Land and water, sun and shade. 

Work with these, as bids thy reason, 
For they work thy toil to aid. 

Sow thy seed and reap in gladness ! 

Man himself is all a seed ; 
Hope and hardship, joy and sadness, 

Slow the plant to ripeness lead. 



THE PENITENT. 

Within a dark monastic cell 

A monk's pale corpse was calmly laid, 

Peace on his lips was seen to dwell, 
And light above the forehead play'd. 

Upon the stone beneath his hand 

Was found a small and written scroll, 

And he whose eye the record scann'd 

From this dim part must guess the whole. 

" There comes a thought at dead of night, 
And bids the shapes of sleep be gone, 

A thought that's more than thought, a sight 
On which the sun has never shone. 

" A pale, stern face, and sterner far, 

Because it is a woman's face ; 
It gleams a waning worn-out star, 

That once was bright with morning grace. 

" An icy vision, calm, and cold, 

The sprite of vanish'd hours it seems ; 

It brings to me the times of old. 

That look like, but that are not, dreams. 

"It brings back sorrows long gone by. 
And folly stain'd not wash'd with tears ; 

Years fall away like leaves, and die — 
And life's bare bony stem appears. 

" Dark face ! Thou art not all a shade 

That fancy bids beside me be ; 
The blood, that once in passion play'd 

Through my young veins, beat high for thee. 

" Now changed and wither'd all ! My sighs 
Round thee have breathed a sicklier air, 

And sad before my saddening eyes 
Thou showest the hues of my despair. 

" Still prayers are strong, and God is good ; 

Man is not made for endless ill. 
Drear sprite ! my soul's tormented mood 

Has y«t a hope thou canst not kill. 

" Repentance clothes in grass and flowers 
The grave in which the past is laid ; 

And close to faith's old minster towers. 
The cross lights up the ghostly shade. 

" Around its foot the shapes of fear. 
Whose eyes my weaker heart appal. 

As sister suppliants thrill the ear 
With cries that loud for mercy call. 

" Thou, God, wilt hear ! Thy pangs are meant 

To heal the spirit, not destroy ; 
And fiends from hell for vengeance sent, 

When thou commandest, work for joy." 



JOHN STERLING. 



387 



THE MOSS ROSE. 

Mossy rose on mossy stone, 
Flowering mid tlie ruins lone, 
I have learnt, beholding thee. 
Youth and age may well agree. 

Bahy germ of freshest hue, 
Out of ruin issuing new ; 
Moss a long laborious growth 
And one stalk supporting both : 

Thus may still, while fades the past, 
Life come forth again as fast ; 
Happy if the relics sere 
Decli a cradle, not a bier. 

Tear the garb, the spirit flies. 
And the heart, unshclter'd, dies ; 
Kill within t!ie nursling flower. 
Scarce the green survives an hour. 

Ever thus together live, 
And to man a lesson give, " 
Moss, the work of vanished years, 
Rose, that but to-day appears. 

Moss, that covers dateless tombs ; 
Bud with early sweet that blooms ; 
Childhood thus, in happy rest, 
Lies on ancient wisdom's breast. 

Moss and rose, and age and youth, 
Flush and verdure, hope and truth, 
Yours be peace that knows not strife, 
One the root and one the life. 



THE SONG OF EVE TO CAIN. 

On ! rest, my baby, rest ! 

The day 
Is glowing down the west ; 

Now tired of sunny play 
Upon thy mother's breast 
Oh ! rest, my darling, rest ! 

Thou first-born child of man, 

In thee 
New joy for us began, 

Which seem'd all dead to be, 
When that so needful ban 
From Eden exiled man. 

But more than Paradise 

Was ours, 
When thou with angel eyes. 

Amid our blighted flowers 
Wast born, a heavenly prize 
Unknown in Paradise. 

My happy garden, thou, 

Where I 
Make many a hopeful vow. 

And every hour espy 
New bloom on each young bough ; 
My sinless tree art thou. 



I fearless reap thy fruit 

Of bliss ; 
And I who am thy root. 

Am to the air to kiss 
The gleams that o'er thee shoot ; 
And fed, I feed thy fruit. 

Thy father's form and pride 

And thought, 
In thee yet undescried. 

Shall soon be fully wrought. 
Grow tall, and bright, and wide. 
In thee our hope and pride. 

Nay, do not stir, my child, 

Be still ; 
In thee is reconciled 

To man heaven's righteous will. 
To thee the curse is mild. 
And smites not thee, my child. 

To us our sin has borne 

Its doom. 
From light dethroned and torn, 

'T was ours to dwell in gloom ; 
But thou, a better morn, 
By that dark night art borne. 

Thou shalt, my child, be frfee 

From sin, 
Nor taste the fatal tree. 

For thou from us shalt win 
A wisdom cheap to thee ; 
So thou from ill be free ! 

My bird, my flower, my star, 

My boy ! 
My all things fair that are. 

My spring of endless joy, 
From thee is heaven not far. 
From thee, its earthly star. 

So, darling, shalt thou grow 

A man. 
While we shall downward go, 

Descend each day a span. 
And sink beneath the wo 
Of deaths from sin that grow. 

And thou, perhaps, shalt see 

A race 
Brought forth by us, like thee ; 

Thou Strength like thine, and grace. 
In none shall ever be 
Of all whom earth can see. 

And thou amid mankind 

Shalt move 
With glorious form and mind, 

In holiness and love ; 
And all in thee shall find 
The bliss of all mankind. 

Then rest, my child, oh rest ! 

The day 
Has darken'd down the west. 

Thou dream the night away 
Upon thy mother's breast ; 
Oh ! rest, my darling, rest ! 



MRS. MACLEAN. 



Letitia Elizabeth Landon was born in 
London, on the fourteenth day of August, 1802. 
Her father, who was of a respectable Here- 
fordshire family, died when she was very 
young-, and his widow and children were left 
in a great degree dependent upon the exertions 
of Letitia, whose habit of writing had com- 
menced in childhood, and who now exhibited 
indications of that genius which soon made 
her initial signature of L. E. L. everywhere 
familiar. 

Her first appearance as a poet was in the 
pages of the Literar}' Gazette, to which she 
was long a frequent contributor; and her first 
volume was The Fate of Adelaide, a Swiss 
romantic tale, published in her eighteenth 
year. In the spring of 1824 it was followed 
by the Improvisatrice and other Poems, and 
about the same time began her permanent 
connection with periodical literature and criti- 
cism. 'J'he constant and exhausting drain of 
the press she bore with cheerfulness, and 
her duties were fulfilled carefully and ear- 
nestly. For fourteen years she was one of 
the most industrious and successful authors 
of England. In this period, besides her re- 
views, essays, and other contributions to lite- 
rary journals, she wrote three novels, Romance 
and Reality, Francesca Carrara, and Ethel 
Churchill ; and The Troubadour, the Vene- 
tian Bracelet, the Golden Violet, the Vow of 
the Peacock, and several volumes of shorter 
poems. Mr. Blanchard, her biographer, re- 
marks of her opinions of books and authors, 
that there may be seen in them the results 
of much miscellaneous reading, research in 
several foreign languages, and acuteness and 
brilliancy of remark, with hastiness of judg- 
ment and prejudiced and inconclusive views, 
but no ungenerous ^or vindictive sentiment or 
trace of an unkindly or interested feeling. She 
often went far out of her way, indeed, to re- 
commend the productions of rivals who abused 
her; and towards those by whom she conceived 
herself obliged, though in the slightest degree, 
she was ever ready to act the friend where she 
should have been the critic only. Her failings 
as a reviewer leaned to virtue's side ; and the 



young writer, with but a spark of the poetic 
fire in his lines, was as sure of a gentle sen- 
tence, of appreciation and sympathy, as the 
established favourite of a grateful welcome, 
and an honouring tribute. 

Many of her poems were in their nature ephe- 
meral; but others, especially those of later years, 
were written with care, and are distinguished for 
true feeling and a delicate fancy. From the be- 
ginning she sung in songs of a sad tone of 
love; nearly all her works are pervaded by a 
gentle and touching melancholy ; yet she is 
said to have been as gay as she was brilliant, 
delighting her friends by her apparent happi- 
ness as well as by her genial wit. But they 
who write most rapidly write oftenest from 
the heart, and the solitary musings of the study 
are more real than the manner or the opinions 
exhibited in society. Miss Landon became, 
with what reason we cannot tell, the subject 
of harsh judgments by the world; her asso- 
ciates " began to wish her health and happi- 
ness in set terms ;" and she gave expression 
to disappointment, impatience, and scorn, in 
writings of too genuine a stamp to be regarded 
as the issues of only imagination. Yet she 
had many intimate and unchanging friends, 
among whom were some of the most eminent 
of her contemporaries. 

In June, 1838, Miss Landon was married 
to Captain Georoe Maclean, Governor of 
Cape Coast Castle, and soon afterward left 
England for Africa. On arriving at her new 
home she wrote letters to her friends in Lon- 
don, which told of happiness and cheerful an- 
ticipations, but they were followed soon by 
intelligence of her death. A mystery hangs 
over her last days. There were rumours of 
suicide and of poisoning. According to the 
verdict of a coroner, her death was caused by 
prussic acid, taken in too large a quantity, to 
cure some slight disease. 

The career of Mrs. Maclean commenced 
brilliantly, but the promise of her earlier 
eflTorts was scarcely fulfilled in her subsequent 
productions, which were generally written un- 
der circumstances that prevented study and 
elaboration. She had a deep feeling of affec- 



LETITIA E. LANDON. 



389 



tion, a lively fancy, a fine eye for the pic- 
turesque, and an unusual command of poetical 
language ; and notwithstanding the haste and 
carelessness with which she wrote, she was 
improving in taste and execution, and would 
probably have gained a far higher reputation 
had she lived a few more years. With all 



her faults she will be remembered as one of 
the sweetest poets of the age. 

Many of the poems of Mrs. Maclean have 
been often reprinted in this country; but the 
most complete American edition of her works 
is that of Carey and Hart, in three large oc- 
tavo volumes. 



THE FACTORY. 
'Tis an accursed thing. 

There rests a shade above yon town, 

A dark, funereal shroud: 
'Tis not the tempest hurrying down, 

'Tis not a summer cloud. 

The smoke that rises on the air 

Is as a type and sign ; 
A shadow flung liy the despair 

Within those streets of thine. 

That smoke shuts out the cheerful day, 

The sunset's purple hues, 
The moonlight's pure and tranquil ray, 

The morning's pearly dews. 

Such is the moral atmosphere 

Around thy daily life; 
Heavy with care, and pale with fear, 

With future tumult rife. 

There rises on the morning wind 

A low, appealing cry, 
A thousand children are resign'd 

To sicken and to die ! 

We read of Moloch's sacrifice. 

We sicken at the name, 
And seem to hear the infant cries — 

And yet we do the same ; — 

And worse — 'twas but a moment's pain 

The heathen altar gave. 
But we give years, — our idol, gain, 

Demands a living grave! 

How precious is the little one 

Before his mother's sight, 
With bright hair dancing in the sun. 

And eyes of azure light ! 

He sleeps as rosy as the south, 

For summer days are long; 
A prayer upon his little mouth, 

LulI'd by his nurse's song. 

Love is around him, and his hours 

Are innocent and free; 
His mind essays its early powers 

Beside his mother's knee. 

When after-years of trouble come. 
Such as await man's prime, 

How will he think of that dear home, 
And childhood's lovely time! 



And such should childhood ever be, 

The fairy well ; to bring 
To life's worn, weary memory 

The freshness of its spring. 

But here the order is reversed. 

And infancy, like age, 
Knows of existence, but its worst, 

One dull and darken'd page ; — 

Written with tears and stamp'd with toil, 
Crush'd from the earliest hour, 

Weeds darkening on the bitter soil 
That never knew a flower. 

Look on yon child, it droops the head. 
It's knees are bow'd with pain ; 

It mutters from its wretched bed, 
" Oh, let me sleep again !" 

Alas ! 'tis time, the mother's eyes 

Turn mournfully away ; 
Alas ! 'tis time, the child must rise. 

And yet it is not day. 

The lantern's lit — she hurries forth. 
The spare cloak's scanty fold 

Scarce screens her from the snowy north. 
The child is pale and cold. 

And wearily the little hands 

Their task accustom'd ply ; 
While daily, some 'mid those pale bands 

Droop, sicken, pine, and die. 

Good God ! to think upon a child 

That has no childish days. 
No careless play, no frolics wild, 

No words of prayer and praise ! 

Man from the cradle — 'tis too soon 

To earn their daily bread. 
And heap the heat and toil of noon 

Upon an infant's head. 

To labour ere their strength be come, 
Or starve, — is such the doom 

That makes of many an English home 
One long and living tomb] 

Is there no pity from above, — 

No mercy in those skies ; 
Hath then the heart of man no love. 

To spare such sacrifice] 

O England ! though thy tribute waves 

Proclaim thee great and free, 
While those small children pine like slaves, 

There is a curse on thee ! 
2k2 



390 



LETITIA. E. LANDON. 



THE MINSTREL'S MONITOR. 

SiLKNT and dark as the source of yon river, 
Whose birth-place we know not, and seek not 
to know, 
Though wild as the flight of the shaft from yon 
quiver, 
Is the course of its waves as in music they flow. 

The lily flings o'er it its silver white blossom. 
Like ivory barks which a fairy hath made ; 

The mse o'er it bends with its beautiful bosom, 
As though 'twere enamour'd itself of its shade. 

The sunshine, like hope, in its noontide hour 

slumbers 

On the stream, as it loved the bright place of 

its rest ; 

And its waves pass in song, as the sea-shell's soft 

numbers [best. 

Had given to those waters their sweetest and 

The banks that surround it are flower-dropt and 

sunny ; 

There the first birth of violets' odour-showers 

weep — 

There the bee heaps his earliest treasures of honey, 

Or sinks in the depths of the harebell to sleep. 

Like prisoners escaped during night from their 

prison. 

The waters fling gayly their spray to the siin; 

Who can tell me from whence that glad river has 

risen? [not one. 

Who can say whence it springs in its beauty? — 

my heart, and my song, which is as my heart's 

flowing, [own ! 

Read thy fate in yon river, for such is thine 

Mid those the chief praise on thy music bestowing, 

Who cares for the lips from whence issue the 

tone? 

Dark as its birth-place so dark is my spirit. 

Whence yet the sweet waters of melody came : 

'Tis the long after-course, not the source, will in- 
herit 
The beauty and glory of sunshine and fame. 



THE FEAST OF LIFE. 

Bin thee to my mystic feast. 

Each one thou lovest is gather'd there; 
Yet put thou on a mourning robe 

And bind the cypress in thy hair. 
The hall is vast, and cold, and drear; 

The board with fairest flowers is spread ; 
Shadows of beauty flit around, 

But beauty from which bloom has fled; 

And music echoes from the walls, 

But music with a dirgelike sound; 
And pale and silent are the guests, 

And every eye is on the ground. 
Here, take this cup, though dark it seem. 

And drink to human hopes and fears; 
'Tis from their native clement. 

The cup is fill'd — it is of tears. 



W^hat, turn'st thou with averted brow? 

Thou scornest this poor feast of mine ; 
And askest for a purple robe, 

Light words, glad smiles, and sunny wine. 
In vain — the veil has left thine eyes. 

Or such these would have seem'd to thee; 
Before thee is the Feast of Life, 

But life in its reality ! ^ 

EXPERIENCE. 

My very heart is fill'd with tears ! I seem 
As I were struggling under some dark dream, 
Which roughly bore me down life's troubled stream. 

The past weighs heavily upon my sou!, 
A tyrant mastering me with stern control; 
The present has no rest — the future has no goaL 

For what can be again but what has been ? 
Soon the young leaf forgets its early green, 
And shadows with our sunshine intervene. 

Quench'd is the spirit's morning wing of fire ; 
We calculate where once we could aspire. 
And the high hope sets in some low desire. 

Experience has rude lessons, and we grow 

Like what we have been taught too late to know, 

And yet we hate ourselves for being so. 

Our early friends, where are they? rather, where 
The fond belief that actual friends there were, 
Not cold and false as all must find they are ? 

We love — may have been loved — but ah! how faint 
The love that withers of its earthly taint. 
To what our first sweet visions used to paint ! 

How have we been deceived, forgotten, flung 
Back on our trusting selves — the heart's core wrung 
By some fond faith to which we weakly clung. 

Alas ! our kindest feelings are the root 

Of all experience's most bitter fruit ; 

They waste the life whose charm they constitute. 

At length they harden, and we feel no more 

All that was felt so bitterly before, 

But with the softness is the sweetness o'er. 

Of things we once enjoy'd how few remain ! 
Youth's flowers are flung behind us, and in vain 
We would stoop down to gather them again. 

Why do we think of this? bind the red wreath — 
Float down Time's water to the viol's breath. 
Wot not what those cold billows hide beneath. 

We cannot do this : from the sparkling brink 
Drops the glad rose, and the bright waters shrink: 
While in the midst of mirth we pause to think ; 

And if we think — we sadden : thought and grief 
Are vow'd companions : while we tarn the leaf 
It darkens, for the brilliant is the brief. 

Ah! then, farewell, ye lovely things that brought 
Your own Elysium hither ! overwrought 
The spirit wearies with the weight of thought. 

Our better nature pineth — let it be ! 

Thou human soul — earth is no home for thee ; 

Thy starry rest is in eternity ! 



LETITIA E. LANDON. 



391 



THE CARRIER-PIGEON RETURNED. 

Sunset has flun^ its glory o'er the flooJs, 
That wind amid Ionia's myrtle woods, 
Sunset that dies a conqueror in its splendour; 

But the warm crimson ray 

Has almost sunk away 
Beneath a purple twilight faint and tender. 

Soft are the hues around the niarhle fanes, 
Whose marble shines amid the wooded planes; 
Fanes where a false but lovely creed was kneeling, 

A creed that held divine 

All that was but a sign, 
The outward to the inward world appealing. 

Earth was a child, and child-like in those hours. 
Full of fresh feelings, and scarce conscious powers, 
Around its own impatieiit beauty flinging; 

These young believings were 

Types of the true and fair, 
The holy faith that time was calmly bringing. 

Still to those woods, with ruins fiU'd, belong 

The ancient immortality of song, 

Names and old words whose music is undying. 

Yet do they haunt the heart 

With its divinest part. 
The past that to the present is replying. 

The purple ocean far beneath her feet. 

The wild thyme on the fragrant hill her seat, 

As in the days of old there leans a maiden, 

Many have watch'd before 

The breaking waves ashore, 
Faint with uncounted moments sorrow-laden. 

With cold and trembling hand 

She has undone the band 

Around the carrier-pigeon just alighted, 

And instant dies away 

The transitory ray 
Fiom the dark eye it had one instant lighted. 

The sickness of a hope too long deferr'd 
Sinks on her heart, it is no longer stirr'd 
By the quick presence of the sweet emotion, 

Sweet even unto pain. 

With which she sees again 
Her bird come sweeping o'er the purple ocean. 

Wo for the watcher, stiil it doth not bring 
A letter nestled fragrant 'neath its wing; 
There is no answer to her fond inquiring, 

Again, and yet again, 

No letter o'er the main 
Quiets the anxious syiirit's fond desiring. 

Down the ungather'd darkness of her hair 
Floats, like a pall that covers her desp;iir, 
What woman's care hath she in her adorning; 
The noontide's sultry hours 
Have wither'd the white flowers, 
Binding its dark lengths in the early morning. 

All day her seat hath been beside the shore. 
Watching for him who will return no more; 
He thinks not of her or her weary weeping. 

Absence, it is thy lot 

To be too soon forgot, 
Or to leave memory but to one sad keeping. 



Oh, folly of a loving heart that clings 
With desperate faith, to which each moment brings 
Quick and faint gleams an instant's thought must 
smother ; 

And yet finds mocking scope 

For some unreal hope, 
Which would appear despair to any other ! 

She knows the hopelessness of what she seeks, 
And yet as soon as rosy morning breaks. 
Doth she unloose her pigeon's silken fetter; 

But through the twilight air 

No more its pinions bear. 
What once so oft they brought, the false one's letter. 

The harvest of the summer rose is spread, 
But lip and cheek with her have lost their red; 
There is the paleness of the soul's consuming — 

Fretfully day by day 

In sorrow worn away ; 
Youth, joy, and bloom have no more sure entombing. I 

It is a common story which the air 

Has had around the weary world to bear. 

That of the trusting spirit's vain accusing ; 

Yet once how firm and fond 

Seem'd the eternal bond 
That now a few brief parted days are loosing. 

Close to her heart the weary picreon lies, 

Gazing upon her with its earnest eyes, 

Which seem to ask — Why are we thus neglected 1 

It is the still despair 

Of passion forced to bear 
Its deep and tender oflTering rejected. 

Poor girl ! her soul is heavy with the past ; 
Around the shades of night are falling fast; 
Heavier still the shadow passing o'er her. 

The maiden will no more 

Watch on the sea-beat shore — 
The darkness of the grave is now before her. 



SUCCESS ALONE SEEN. 

Ff.w know of life's beginnings — men behold 
The goal achieved ; — the warrior, when his sword 
Flashes red triumph in the noonday sun ; 
The poet, when his lyre hangs on the palm ; 
The statesman, when the crowd proclaim his voice, 
And mould opinion, on his gifted tongue: 
They count not life's first steps, and never think 
Upon the many miserable hours 
When hope deferr'd was sickness to the heart. 
They reckon not the battle and the march, 
The long privations of a wasted youth ; 
They never sec the banner till unfurl'd. 
What are to them the solitary nights 
Past [>ale and anxious by the sickly lamp, 
Till the younar poet wins the world at last 
To listen to the music long his own 1 
The crowd attend the statesman's fiery mind 
That makes their destiny ; but they do not trace 
Its struggle, or its long expectancy. 
Hard are life's early steps; and, but that youth 
Is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope. 
Men would behold its threshold, and despair. 



392 



LETITIA E. LANDON. 



STANZAS. 

Oh, no ! my heart can never be 

Again in lightest hopes the same ; 
The love that lingers there for thee 

Has more of ashes than of flame. 

Still deem not but that I am yet 

As much as ever all thine own ; 
Though now the soul of love be set 

On a heart chill'd almost to stone. 

And can you marvel 1 only look 

On all that heart has had to bear — 
On all that it has yet to brook, 

And wonder then at its despair. 

Oh, love is destiny, and mine 

Has long been struggled with in vain ; 

Victim or votary, at thy shrine 

There I am vow'd — there must remain. 

My first — my last — my only love, 

Oh blame me not for that I dwell 
On all that I have had to prove 

Of Love's despair, of Hope's farewell. 

I think upon mine early dreams, 

When youth, hope, joy, together sprung; 

The gushing forth of mountain streams, 
On which no shadow had been flung. 

When love seem'd only meant to make 

A sunshine on life's silver seas, — 
Alas, that we should ever wake. 

And wake to weep o'er dreams like these ! 

I loved, and love was like to me 

The spirit of a fairy tale. 
When we have but to wish, and be 

Whatever wild wish may prevail. 

I deem'd that love had power to part 
The chains and blossoms of life's thrall, 

Make an Elysium of the heart, 
And shed its influence over all. 

I link'd it with all lovely things. 

Beautiful pictures, tones of song, 
All those jjure, high imaginings, 

That but in thought to earth belong. 

And all that was unreal became 

Reality whrn blent witli thee — 
It was but colouring that flame. 

More than a lava flood to me. 

I was not happy — love forbade 

Peace by its feverish restlessness ; 
But this was sweet, and then I had 

Hope, which relies on happiness. 

I need not say how, one by one, 

Love's flowers have dropp'd from oil" love's chain; 
Enough to say that they are gone. 

And that they cannot bloom again. 

I know not what the pangs may !ie 

That hearts betray'd or slighted prove — 

I speak but of the misery 

That waits on fond and mutual love. 



The torture of an absent hour. 

When doubts mock reason's faint control : 
'Tis fearful thinking of the power 

Another holds upon our soul ! 

To think another has in thrall 

All of life's best and dearest part ; 

Our hopes, affections, trusted all 

To that frail bark — the human heart. 

To yield thus to another's reign ; 

To live but in another's breath — 
To double all life's powers of pain — 

To die twice in another's death ; 

While these things present to me seem, 
And what can now the past restore, 

Love as I may, yet I can dream 
Of happiness in love no more. 



NECESSITY. 

Ix the ancestral presence of the dead 
Sits a lone power — a veil upon the head, 
Stern with the terror of an unseen dread. 

It sitteth cold, immutable, and still. 
Girt with eternal consciousness of ill. 
And strong and silent as its own dark will. 

We are the victims of its iron rule. 

The warm and beating human heart its tool; 

And man, innuortal, godlike, but its fool. 

We know not of its presence, though its power 
Be on the gradual round of every hour. 
Now flinging down an empire, now a flower. 

And all things small and careless are its own, 
Unwittingly the seed minute is sown, 
The tree of evil out of it is grown. 

At times we see and struggle with our chain, 
And dream that somewhat we are freed, in vain ; 
The mighty fetters close on us again. 

We mock our actual strength with lofty thought, 
And towers that look into the heavens are wrought, 
But after all our toil the task is naught. 

Down comes the stately fabric, and the sands 
Are scatter'd with the work of myriad hands. 
High o'er whose pride the fragile wild-flower stands. 

Such are the wreck of nations and of kings. 
Far in the desert, where the pahn-tree springs; 
'Tis the same story in all meaner things. 

The heart builds up its hopes, though not address'd 

To meet the sunset glories of the west. 

But garner'd in some still sweet-singing nest. 

But the dark power is on its noiseless way, 
The song is silent so sweet yesterday. 
And not a green leaf lingers on the spray. 

We mock ourselves with freedom and with hope, 
The while our feet glide down life's faithless slope; 
One has no strength, the other has no scope. 

So we are flung on time's tumultuous wave, 
Forced there to struggle, but denied to save, 
Till the stern tide ebbs — and there is the grave. 



LETITIA E. LANDON. 



393 



MEMORY. 

I DO not say bequeath unto my soul 

Thy memory, I rather ask forgetting ; 
Withdraw, I pray, from me thy strong control. 

Leave something in the wide world wortli regret- 
ting. 
I need my thoughts for other things than thee, 

I dare not let thine image fill them only ; 
The hurried happiness it wakes in me 

Will leave the hours that are to come more lonely. 

I live not like the many of my kind ; 

Mine is a world of feelings and of fancies. 
Fancies whose rainbow-empire is the mind. 

Feelings that realize their own romances. 

To dream and to create has been my fate, 

Alone, apart from life's more busy scheming ; 

I fear to think that I may find too late 

Vain was the toil, and idle was the dreaming. 

Have I uprear'd my glorious pyre of thought 
Up to the heavens, but for my own entombing? 

The fair and fragrant things that years have brought, 
Must they be gather'd for my own consuming"! 

Oh ! give me back the past that took no part 
In the existence it was but surveying; 

That knew not then of the awaken'd heart 
Amid the life of other lives decaying. 

Why should such be mine ownl I sought it not: 
More than content to live apart and lonely, 

The feverish tumult of a loving lot 

Is what I wish'd, and thought to picture only. 

Surely the spirit is its own free will ; 

What should o'ermaster mine to vain complying 
With hopes that call down what they bring of ill, 

With fears to their own questioning replying 7 

In vain, in vain ! Fate is above us all ; 

We struggle, but what matters our endeavour] 
Our doom is gone beyond our own recall, 

May we deny or mitigate it 1 never ! 

And what art thou to me, thou who dost wake 
The mind's still depths with trouble and repining] 

Nothing; though all things now thy likeness take; 
Nothing, and life has nothing worth resigning. 

Ah, yes ! one thing, thy memory ; though grief 
Watching the expiring beam of hope's last ember; 

Life had one hour, bright, beautiful, and brief. 
And now its only task is to remember. 



RESOLVES. 

What mockeries are our most firm resolves; 
To will is ours, but not to execute. 
We map our future like some unknown coast. 
And say, " Here is a harbour, here a rock — 
The one we will attain, the other shun :" 
And we do neither. Some chance gale springs up 
And bears us far o'er some unfathom'd sea; 
Our efforts arc all vain ; at Icnsjth we yield 
To winds and waves that laugh at man's control. 
50 



WE MKiHT HAVE BEEN! 

We might have been ! these are but common words. 
And yet they make the sum of life's bewailing; 

They are the echo of those tiner chords, 

Whose music life deplores when unavailing. 
We might have been ! 

We might have been so happy ! says the child, 
Pent in the weary school-room during summer, 

When the green rtishes mid the marshes wild. 
And rosy fruits, attend the radiant comer. 
We might have been ! 

It is the thought that darkens on our youth, 
When first experience, sad experience, teaches 

What fallacies we have believed for truth. 
And what few trulbs endeavour ever reaches. 
We might have been ! 

Alas ! how different from what we are 

Had we but known the bitter path before us ; 

But feelings, hopes, and fancies left afar. 

What in the wide bleak world can e'er restore usT 
We might have been ! 

It is the motto of all human things, 

The end of all that waits on mortal seeking; 

The weary weight upon Hope's flagging wings, 
It is the cry of the worn heart while breaking — 
We might have been ! 

And when, warm with the heaven that gave it birth, 
Dawns on our world-worn way Love's hour 
Elysian, 
The last fair angel lingering on our earth. 

The shadow of what thought obscures the vision] 
We might have been ! 

A cold fatality attends on love, 

Too soon or else too late the heart-beat quickens ; 
The star which is our fate springs up above. 

And we but say, while round the vapour thickens, 
We might have been ! 

Life knoweth no like misery ; the rest 

Are single sorrows, hut in this are blended 

All sweet emotions that disturb the breasf; 
The light that was our loveliest is ended. 
We might have been ! 

Henceforth, how much of the full heart must be 
A sealed book at whose contents we tremble ] 

A still voice mutters mid our misery. 

The worst to hear, because it must dissemble — 
We might have been ! 

Life is made up of miserable hours. 

And all of which we craved a brief possessing, 
For which we wasted wishes, hopes, and powers, 

Comes with some fatal drawback on the blessing. 
We might have been ! 

The future never renders to the past 

The young beliefs intrusted to its keeping; 

Inscribe one sentence — life's first truth and last — 
On the pale marble where our dust is sleeping — 
We might have been ! 



394 



LETITIA E. LANDON. 



A LONG WHILE AGO. 

Stilt, hangeth down the old accustom'd willow, 

Hiding the silver underneath each leaf, 
So drops the long hair from some maiden pillow, 

When midnight heareth the else silent grief; 
There floats the waler-lily, like a sovereign 

Whose lovely empire is a fairy world, 
The purple dragon-fly above it hovering. 

As when its fragile ivory uncurl'd 
A long whife ago. 

I hear the bees in sleepy music winging [noon — 

From the wild thyme when they have pass'd the 
There is the blackbird in the hawthorn singing, 

Stirring the white spray with the same sweet tune; 
Fragrant the tansy breathing from the meadows, 

As the west wind bends down the long green grass. 
Now dark, now golden, as the fleeting shadows 

Of the light clouds past as they wont to pass 
A long while ago. 

There are the roses which we used to gjither 

To bind a young fair brow no longer fair; 
Ah ! thou art mocking us, thou summer weather. 

To be so sunny, with the loved one where ? 
'Tis not her voice — 'tis not her step — that lingers 

In the lone familiar sweetness on the wind ; 
The bee, the bird, are now the only singers — • 

Where is the music once with tlieir's combined 
A long while ago ] 

As the lorn flowers that in her pale hands perish'd 

Is she who only hath a memory here. 
She was so much a part of us, so cherish'd, 

So young, that even love forgot to fear. 
Now is her image paramount, it reigneth 

With a sad strength that lime may not subdue; 
And memory a mournful triumph gaineth. 

As the slow looks we cast around renew 
A long while ago. 

Thou lovely garden ! where the summer covers 
The tree with green leaves, and the ground with 
flowers; 

Darkly the past around thy beauty hovers — 
The past — the grave of our once happy hours. 

It is too sad to gaze upon the seeming 

Of nature's changeless loveliness, and feel [ing 

That, with the sunshine round, the heart is dream- 
Darkly o'er wounds inflicted, not to heal, 
A long while ago. 

Ah ! visit not the scenes where youth and childhood 

Pass'd years that deepen'd as those years went by; 
Shadows will darken in the careless wildwood — 

There will be tears upon the tranquil sky. 
Memories, like phantoms, haunt me while I wander 

Beneath the drooping boughs of each old tree : 
I grow too sad as mournfully I ponder 

Things that are not — and yet that used to be — 
A long while ago. 

Worn out — the heart seems like a ruin'd altar ; 

Where are the friends, and where the faith of y ore? 
My eyes grow dim with tears, my footsteps falter. 

Thinking of those whom I can love no more. 



We change, and others change, while recollection 
Would fain renew what it can but recall. 

Dark are life's dreams, and weary its affection, 
And cold its hopes, and yet I felt them all 
A long while ago. 



CAN YOU FORGET ME? ' 

Can you forget me 1 I who have so cherish'd 

The veriest trifle that was memory's link ; 
The roses that you gave me, although perish'd, 

Were precious in my sight; they made me think 
You took them in their scentless beauty stooping 

From the warm shelter of the garden wall; 
Autumn, while into languid winter drooping 

Gave its last blossoms, opening but to fall. 
Can you forget them ? 

Can you forget me "? I am not relying 

On plighted vows — alas! I know their worth; 
Man's faith to woman is a trifle, dying 

Upon the very breath that gave it birth ; 
But I remember hours of quiet gladness. 

When, if the heart had truth, it spoke it then. 
When thoughts would sometimes take a toneof sad- 

And then unconsciously grow glad again, [ness, 
Can you forget them \ 

Can )'ou forget me ? My whole soul was blended : 

At least it sought to blend itself with thine ; 
My life'svvhole purpose, winning thee, seem'd ended; 

Thou wert my heart's sweet home — my spirit's 
shrine. • 

Can you forget me? when the firelight burning, 

Flung sudden gleams around the quiet room. 
How would thy words, to long pastmoments turning. 

Trust me with thoughts soft as the shadowy gloom! 
Can you forget them ? 

There is no truth in love, whate'er its seeming, 

And heaven itself could scarcely seem more true. 
Sadly have I awaken'd from the dreaming, 

Whose charmed slumber, false one ! was of you. 
I gave mine inmost being to thy keeping — 

I had no thought I did not seek to share ; 
Feelings that hush'd williin my soul were sleeping. 

Waked into voice to trust them to thy care. 
Can you furget them ? 

Can you forget me 7 This is vainly tasking 

The faithless heart where I, alas ! am not. 
Too well I know the idleness of asking — 

The misery — of why am I forgot % 
The happy hours that I have pass'd while kneeling 

Half slave, half child, to gaze upon thy face. 
— But what to thee this passionate appealing — 

Let my heart break — it is a common case. 
You have forgotten me. 



THE FAREWELL. 

Faheweli. ! 
Shadows and scenes that have, for many hours, 
Been my companions; I part from ye like friends — 
Dear and familiar ones — with deep sad thoughts, 
And hopes, almost misgivings ! 



LETITIA E. LANDON. 



395 



CALYPSO WATCHING THE OCEAN. 

Years, years have pass'd away, 
Since to yonder fated bay 

Did the hero come. 
Years, years have pass'd the while 
Since he left the lovely isle 

For his Grecian home. 
He is with the dead — but she 
Weepeth on eternally 

In the lone and lovely island 

Mid the far off southern seas. 

Downwards floateth her bright hair, 
Fair — how exquisitely fair ! 

But it is unbound. 
Never since that parting hour 
Golden band or rosy flower 

In it has been wound ! 
There it droopeth sadly bright, ^ 
In the morning's sunny light, 

On the lone and lovely island 

In the far off southern seas. 

Like a marble statue placed. 
Looking o'er the watery waste, 

With its white fix'd gaze ; 
There the goddess sits, her eye 
Raised to the unpitying sky : 

So uncounted days 
Has she ask'd of yonder main, 
Him it will not bring again 

To the lone and lovely island 

In the far off southern seas. 

To that stately brow is given 
Loveliness that sprung from heaven — 

Is, like heaven, bright : 
Never there may time prevail, 
But her perfect foce is pale; 

And a troubled light 
Tells of one who may not die, 
Vex'd with immortality. 

In the lone and lovely island 

Mid the far off southern seas. 

Desolate beside that strand, 
Bow'd upon her cold, white hand. 

Is her radiant head ; 
Silently she sitteth there. 
While her large eyes on the air 

Traced the much-loved dead : 
Eyes that know not tears nor sleep. 
Would she not be glad to weep. 

In the lone and lovely island 

Mid the far off southern seas. 

Far behind, the fragrant pile 
Sends its odours through the isle ; 

And the winds that stir 
In the poplars are imbued 
With the cedar's precious wood, 

With incense and with myrrh. 
Till the a/.urc waves beneath 
Bear away the scented breath 

Of the lone and lovely island 

In the far off southern seas. 



But no more does that perfume 
Hang around the purple loom 

Where Calypso wove 
Threads of gold with curious skill. 
Singing at her own sweet will 

Ancient songs of love ; 
Weary on the sea-wash'd shore, 
She will sing those songs no more 

In the lone and lovely island 

Mid the far off southern seas. 

From the large green leaves escape 
Clusters of the blooming grape ; 

Round the shining throne 
Still the silver fountains play. 
Singing on through night and day, 

But they sing alone: 
Lovely in their early death, 
No one binds a violet wreath. 

In the lone and lovely island 

Mid the far off southern seas. 

Love and Fate — oh, fearful pair ! 
Terrible in strength ye are ; 

Until ye had been, 
Happy as a summer night. 
Conscious of its own sweet light, 

Was that Island-queen. 
Would she could forget to grieve. 
Or that she could die, and leave 

I'he lone and lovely island 

Mid the far off southern seas. 

She is but the type of all, 
Mortal or celestial. 

Who allow the heart. 
In its passion and its power. 
On some dark and fated hour. 

To assert its part. 
Fate attends the steps of Love, 
Both brought misery from above 

To the lone and lovely island 

Mid the far off southern seas. 



DESPONDENCY. 

Ah, tell me not that memory 

Sheds gladness o'er the past ; 
What is recall'd by faded flowers. 

Save that they did not last ? 
Were it not better to forget. 
Than but remember and regret ? 

Look back upon your hours of youth — 

What were your early years. 
But scenes of childish cares and griefs'? 

And say not childish tears 
Were nothing ; at that time they were 
More than the young heart well could bear. 

Go on to riper years, and look 

Upon your sunny spring; 
And from the wrecks of former years, 

What will your memory bring 1 
Affections wasted, pleasures fled. 
And hopes now nuniber'd with the dead ! 



396 



LETITIA E. LANDON. 



THE WRONGS OF LOVE. 

Alas, how bitter are the wrongs of love I 
Life has no other sorrow so acute : 
For love is made of every fine emotion, 
Of generous impulses, and noble thoughts; 
It looketh to the stars, and dreams of heaven ; 
It nestles mid the flowers, and sweetens earth. 
Love is aspiring, yet is humble, too : 
It doth exalt another o'er itself, 
With sweet heart-homage, which delights to raise 
That which it worships; yet is fain to win 
The idol to its lone and lowly home 
Of deep affection. 'Tis an utter wreck 
When such hopes perish. From that moment, life 
Has in its depths a well of bitterness, 
For which there is no healing. 



THE OLD TIMES. 

Do you recall what now is living only 

Amid the memories garner'd at the heartl 
The quiet garden, quiet and so lonely. 

Where fruit and flowers had each an equal part] 
When we had gather'd cowslips in the meadow 

We used to bear them to the ancient seat. 
Moss-grown, beneath the apple-tree's soft shadov/, 

Which flung its rosy blossoms at our feet, 
In the old, old times, 
The dear old times. 

Ne'er was the well o'er whose damp walls were 
weeping 
Stonecrop, and grounsel, and pale yellow flowers, 
While o'er the banks the strawberry plants were 
creeping 
In the white beauty of June's earliest hours. 
The currant-bush and lilac grew together ; 

The bean's sweet breath was blended with the 
Alike rejoicing in the pleasant weather [rose ; 

That brought the bloom to these, the fruit to those. 
In the old, old times, 
The dear old times. 

There was no fountain over marble falling; 
' But the bees murmur'd one perpetual song. 
Like soothing waters, and the birds were calling 

Amid the fruit-tree blossoms all day long; 
Upon the sunny grass-plot stood the dial, 

Whose measured time strange contrast with ours 

Ah ! was it omen of life's after trial, [made : 

That even then the hours were told in shade, 

In the old, old times, 

The dear old times ] 

But little reck'd we then of those sick fancies 
To which in after life the spirit yields : 

Our world was of the fairies and romances 

With which we wander'd o'er the summer fields; 

Then did we question of the down-balls blowing 
To know if some slight wish would come to pass; 

If showers we fear'd, we sought where there was 
growing 



Some weather flower which was our weather 
In the old, old times 
The dear old times. 

Yet my heart warms at these fond recollections, 

Breaking the heavy shadow on my day. 
Ah ! who hath cared for all the deep affections — 

The love, the kindness I have thrown away ? 
The dear old garden ! There is now remaining 

As little of its bloom as rests with me. 
Thy only memory is this sad complaining, 

Mourning that never more for us can be 
The old, old times, 
The dear old times. 



CRESCENTIUS. 

I LooK'n upon his brow, no sign 

Of guilt or fear was there ; 
He stood as proud by that death-shrine 

As even o'er Despair , 

He had a power ; in his eye 
There was a quenchless energy, 

A spirit that could dare 
The deadliest form that Death could take, 
And dare it for the daring's sake. 

He stood, the fetters on his hand, 

He raised them haughtily ; 
And had that grasp been on the brand. 

It could not wave on high 
With freer pride than it waved now. 
Around he look'd with changeless brow 

On many a torture nigh : 
The rack, the chain, the axe, the wheel. 
And worst of all, his own red steel. 

I saw him once before ; he rode 

Upon a coal-black steed. 
And tens of thousands throng'd the road 

And bade their wanior speed. 
His helm, his breastplate, were of gold. 
And graved with many a dint that told 

Of many a soldier's deed ; 
The sun shone on his sparkling mail. 
And danced his snow-pluine on the gale. 

But now he stood chain'd and alone, 

The headsman by his side; 
The plume, the helm, the charger, gone ; 

The sword, which had defied 
The mightiest, lay broken near ; 
And yet no sign or sound of fear 

Came from that lip of pride ; 
And never king or conqueror's brow 
Wore higher look than his did now. 

He bent beneath the headsman's stroke 

With an uncover'd eye ; 
A wild shout from the numbers broke 

Who throng'd to see him die. 
It was a people's loud acclaim. 
The voice of anger and of shame, 

A nation's funeral cry, 
Rome's wail above her only son. 
Her patriot, and her latest one. 



LETITIA E. LANDON. 



397 



I PRAY THEE LET ME WEEP TO-NIGHT. 

I PRAT thee let me weep to-night, 

'Tis rarely I am weeping ; 
My tears are buried in my heart, 

Like cave-lock'd fountains sleeping. 

But oh, to-night, those words of thine 
Have brought the past before me ; 

And shadows of long-vanish'd years 
Are passing sadly o'er me. 

The friends I loved in early youth, 

The faithless and forgetting. 
Whom, though they were not worth my love, 

I cannot help regretting; 

My feelings, once the kind, the warm, 

But now the hard, the frozen ; 
The errors I've too long pursued, 

The path I should have chosen ; 

The hopes that are like falling lights 

Around my pathway dying; 
The consciousness none others rise, 

Their vacant place supplying ; 

The knowledge by experience taught, 

The useless, the repelling; 
For what avails to know how false 

Is all the charmer's telling 1 

I would give worlds, could I believe 

One half that is profess'd me ; 
Affection ! could I think it thee. 

When Flattery has caress'd me T 

I cannot bear to think of this. 

Oh, leave me to my weeping ; 
A few tears for that grave, my heart, 

Where hope in death is sleeping. 



WEAKNESS ENDS WITH LOVE. 

I SAT not, regret me ; 

You will not regret ; 
You will try to forget me. 

You cannot forget ; 
We shall hear from each other. 

Ah, misery to hear 
Those names from another 

Which once were so dear ! 

But deep words shall sting thee. 

That breathe of the past ; 
And many things bring thee 

Thoughts fated to last; 
The fond hopes that center'd 

In thee are all dead, 
The iron has enter'd 

The soul where they fed. 

Of the chain that once bound me, 

The memory is mine. 
But my words are around thee. 

Their power is on thine ; 
No hope, no repentance, 

My weakness is o'er. 
It died with the sentence — 

I love thee no more ! 



AFFECTION. 

Therb is in life no blessing like aftection : 
It soothes, it hallows, elevates, subdues. 
And bringeth down to earth its native heaven. 
It sits beside the cradle patient hours. 
Whose sole contentment is to watch and love ; 
It bendeth o'er the death-bed, and conceals 
Its own despair with words of faith and hope. 
Life has naught else that may supply its place ; 
Void is ambition, cold is vanity. 
And wealth an empty glitter, without love. 



AGE AND YOUTH. 

" I'll tell thee," said the old man, "what is life. 
A gulf of troubled waters — where the soul. 
Like a vex'd bark, is toss'd upon the waves 
Of pain and pleasure, by the wavering breath 
Of passions. They are winds that drive it on. 
But only to destruction and despair. 
Mothinks that we have known some former state 
More glorious than our present; and the heart 
Is haunted by dim memories — shadows left 
By past felicity. Hence do we pine 
For vain aspirings — hopes that fill the eyes 
With bitter tears for their own vanity. 
Are we then fallen from some lovely star, 
Whose consciousness is as an unknown curse V 



BITTER EXPERIENCE. 

How often, in this cold and bitter world, 
Is the warm heart thrown back upon itself! 
Cold, careless, are we of another's grief; 
We wrap ourselves in sullen selfishness; 
Harsh-judging, narrow-minded, stern and chill 
In measuring every action but our own. 
How small in some men's motives, but how mean ! 
There are who never knew one generous thought; 
Whose heart-pulse never quicken'd with the joy 
Of kind endeavour, or sweet sympathy. 
There are too many such ! 



THE POET'S FIRST ESSAY. 

It is a fearful stake the poet casts. 
When he comes forth from his sweet solitude 
Of hopes, and songs, and visionary things 
To ask the iron verdict of the world. 
Till then his home has been in fairyland, 
Shelter'd in the sweet depths of his own heart; 
But the strong need of praise impels him forth; 
For never was there poet but he craved 
That golden sunshine of secure renown, 
That sympatiiy v^'hich is the life of fame. 
It is full dearly bought : henceforth he lives 
Feverish and anxious, in an unkind world. 
That only gives the laurel to the grave. 
2L 



CHARLES SWAIN. 



Charles Swain was born in Manchester, 
in October, 1803. In his fourteenth year he 
was apprenticed to a dyer, hut he is now, I 
believe, an engraver and lithographer, in his 
native city. When about twenty years of age, 
he made his first appearance as a writer in the 
Manchester Iris, then edited by James Mont- 
gomery. In 1827 he published his contribu- 
tions to this and other periodicals, under the 
title of Metrical Essays on Subjects of History 
and Imagination. In 1841 he printed, in a 
beautiful volume, illustrated in the style of 
Rogers's Italy, The Mind and other Poems, 



embracing all he had written which he deemed 
worthy of preservation. The Mind is his 
longest and most finished production. 

SouTHEY said of Swain, that " if ever man 
was born a poet, he was;" and he merited 
the praise far better than many others the 
encomiums v;hich the laureate so liberally 
bestowed. He has earnestness, tenderness, 
and a refined taste. He addresses himself to 
the heart and the imagination, in poems re- 
markable for their sincerity and simplicity, 
which are as melodious as Moore's and as pure 
as Cowper's. 



THE LYRE. 

A souNH came floating by, 
O'er the still beauty of the moonlight air ; 

Soft as a spirit's sigh, 
Soothing the death-couch of the young and fair. 

A sound came floating free, 
A wild, and low, and melancholy sound ; 

A wandering harmony. 
Haunting the slumber of the woods around. 

" Whence art thou?" murmur'd I — 
" Lone visitant of this deserted shrine, 

Whence art thoul — speak, reply ; 
Answer, thou voice, this troubled heart of mine !" 

" Ere yet the shadowy woods 
Waved their green honours to the breath of morn ; 

Ere yet the solitudes 
Echo'd the song of thunders — I was born ! 

« My voice was known and heard, 
When Paradise grew glorious with the Ught 

Of angels ! — and the Word 
Spake 'midst the stars of first created night ! 

" My voice was felt, when first 
The gathering murmur of the deluge woke ! 

When, like creation's burst, 
Proud forests fell — and giant mountains broke ! 

" Mine was the breath that drew 
The patriot forth to guard his native shore ; 

When lances wildly flew — 
And cities trembled to the cannon's roar ! 

" Upon ray wings the prayer 
Ot countless millions sought the Saviour's throne : 

My power is everywhere — 
In every heart — in every language known ! 

398 



" Still askest thou what am 1 1 — 
Go, ask the bard whose visions I inspire : 

And, oh ! he will reply. 
The lyre — the lyre — the soul-exalting lyre ! 



THE KIND OLD FRIENDLY FEELINGS. 

The kind old friendly feelings ! 

We have their spirit yet — 
Tho' years and years have pass'd, old friend, 

Since thou and I last met ! 
And something of gray Time's advance 

Speaks in thy fading eye ; 
Yet 'tis the same good, honest glance 

I loved in times gone by ! 
Ere the kind old friendly feelings 

Had ever brought one sigh ! 

The warm old friendly feelings ! 

Ah, who need yet be told. 
No other links can bind the heart 

Like those loved links of old ! 
Thy hand I joy'd in youth to clasp 

The touch of age may show ; 
Yet, ' tis the same true, hearty grasp 

I loved so long ago ! 
Ere the last old friendly feelings 

Had taught one tear to flow ! 

The kind old friendly feelings ! 

Oh, seem they e'er less dear 
Because some recollections 

May meet us with a tear ? 
Though hopes we shared, — the early beams 

Ambition show'd our way, — 
Have fled, dear friend, like morning dreams 

Before truth's searching ray ; — 
Still we've kept the kind old feelings 

That bless'd our youthful day ! 



CHARLES SWAIN. 



399 



RECOLLECTIONS. 

One I knew 
Whose semblance painter's pencil never drew ; 
Droop, fall ! — as from the rose fades soft the dew. 

Dying in tints of beauty — leaf by leaf! 
'Twas whisper'd love first call'd the canker there ; 
But if she grieved, none ever saw her grief, 
Thethought were torture: should a breath declare 
That unkind love had left her cheek less fair ! 
And thus she fed on hope, who said away 
From scenes too dear ; that 'nealh a foreign air 
No more the worm within her breast should prey ; 
No more her spirit faint, her little strength decay ! 

Love 1 I will tell thee what it is to love ! 
It is to build with human thoughts a shrine, 
Where hope sits brooding like a beauteous dove ; 
Where time seems young — and life a thing divine. 
All tastes, all pleasures, all desires combine 
To consecrate this sanctuary of bliss. 
Above, the stars in shroudless beauty shine; 
Around, the streams their tlovvery margins kiss : 
And if there's heaven on earth, that heaven is 
surely this. 

Yes, this is love — the steadfast and the true ; 
The immortal glory which hath never set; 
The best, the brightest boon the heart e'er knew ; 
Of all life's sweets the very sweetest yet! 
O, who can but recall the eve they met, [vow. 
To breathe in some green walk their first young 
While summer fiowers with evening dews were wet 
And winds sigh'd soft around the mountain's brow. 
And all was rapture then, which is but memory now. 

Hers was a form to dream of — slight and frail; 
As though too delicate for earth — too fair 
To meet the worldly conflicts which assail 
Nature's unhappy footsteps everywhere ! 
There was a languor in her pensive air, 
A tone of suffering in her accents weak, 
The hectic signet, never known to spare, 
Darken'd the beauty of her thoughtful cheek, 
And omen'd fate more sad than even tears might 
speak. 

The angel-rapt expression of her eye — 
The hair descending, like a golden wing, 
Adovvn her shoulders' faded symmetry ; 
Her moveless lip, so pined and perishing, — 
The shadow of itself; — its rose-like spring 
Blanch'd ere its time; for morn no balm might wake; 
Nor youth with all its hope, nepenthe bring ! 
She look'd like one whose heart was born to break ; 
A face on which to gaze made every feeling ache ! 

The peasant, hastening to the vine-ripe fields, 
Oft turn'd with pity towards the stranger maid, 
Whose faltering steps approach'd yon mount, 

which yields 
A view from shore to farthest sea display'd ; 
And there, till setting day, the maiden stray'd ; 
Watching each sail, if haply she might find 
The distant ship which her dear friends convey'd ; 
And still hope gave her wings to every wind, 
And whisper'd, " See, they come !" till ached her 

wearied mind. 



FORGIVE AND FORGET. 

FoRGiTEand forget! why the worldwouldbe lonely, 

The garden a wilderness left to deform ; 
If the flowers but remember'd thechilling windsonly, 

And thefieldsgave no verdure for fear of the storm! 
Oh, still in thy loveliness emblem the flower. 

Give the fragrance of feeling to sweeten life's way; 
And prolong not again the brief cloud of an hour, 

With tears that but darken the rest of the day ! 

Forgive and forget ! there's no breast so unfeeling 

But some gentle thoughts of affection there live ; 
And the best of us all require something concealing, 

Some heart that with smiles can forget and forgive! 
Then away with the cloud from those beautiful eyes, 

That brow was no home for such frowns to have 
met; 
Oh, how could our spirits e'er hope for the skies. 

If Heaven refused to Forgive and Forget. 



LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHER. 

Let us love one another, — 

Not long may we stay ; 
In this bleak world of mourning 

Some droop while 'tis day, 
Others fade in their noon, 

And few linger till eve: 
Oh ! there breaks not a heart 

But leaves some one to grieve; 
And the fondest, the purest. 

The truest that met. 
Have still found the need 

To forgive and forget ! 
Then, ah! though the hopes 

That we nourish'd decay. 
Let us love one another 

As long as we stay. 

There are hearts, like the ivy. 

Though all be decay'd 
That it sccm'd to clasp fondly 

In sunlight and shade; 
No leaves droop in sadness. 

Still gayly they spread, 
Undimm'd midst the blighted, 

The lonely, and dead : 
But the mistletoe clings 

To the oak, not in part. 
But with leaves closely round it — 

The root in its heart ; 
Exists but to twine it, — 

Imbibe the same dew, — 
Or to fall with its loved oak, 

And perish there too. 

Thus, let's love one another 

Midst sorrows the worst, 
Unaltcr'd and fond. 

As we loved at the first ; 
Though the false wing of pleasure 

]\[ay change and forsake, 
And the bright urn of wealth 

Into particles break. 



400 CHARLES SWAIN. 


There are some sweet affections 


THE CHAMOIS HUNTERS. 


That wealth cannot buy, 




That cHng but still closer 


AwAT to the Alps! 


When sorrow draws nigh 


For the hunters are there, 


And remain with us yet, 


To rouse the chamois 


Though all else pass away ; 


In his rock-vaulted lair. 


Thus, let's love one another 


From valley to mountain, 


As long as we stay. 


See ! — swiftly they go — 




As the ball from the rifle — 
The shaft from the bow. 


* 




Nor chasms, nor glaciers, 


IF THOU HAST LOST A FRIEND. 


Their firmness dismay ; 




Undaunted, they leap 


If thou hast lost a friend, 


Like young leopards at play ; 


By hard or hasty word, 


And the dash of the torrent 


Go, — call him to thy heart again ; 


Sounds welcome and dear, 


Let pride no more be heard. 


As the voice of a friend 


Remind him of those happy days, 


To the wanderer's ear. 


Too beautiful to last ; 




Ask, if a word should cancel years 


They reck not the music 


Of truth and friendship past 1 


Of hound or of horn. 


Oh ! if thou'st lost a friend, 


The neigh of the courser. 


By hard or hasty word, 


The gladness of morn. 


Go, — call liim to thy heart again ; 


The blasts of the tempest 


Let pride no more be heard. 


Their dark sinews brace; 




And the wilder the danger. 


Oh ! tell him, from thy thought 


The sweeter the chase. 


The light of joy hath fled ; 


With spirits as strong 


That, in thy sad and silent breast, 


As their footsteps are light. 


Thy lonely heart seems dead ; 


On — onward they speed. 


That mount and vale, — each path ye trod. 


In the joy of their might : 


By morn or evening dim, — 


Till eve gathers round them, 


Reproach you with their frowning gaze, 


And silent and deep — 


And ask your soul for him. 


The bleak snow their pillow — 


Then, if thou'st lost a friend, 


The wild hunters sleep. 


By hard or hasty word. 




Go, — call him to thy heart again ; 




Let pride no more be heard. 






THE BIRD OF HOPE. 
A GOLDEN cage of sunbeams 




THE FIRST PRAYER. 


Half down a rainbow hung; 




And sweet therein a golden bird 


Teli. me, ye stars of night — 


The whole bright morning sung ! — 


In the ages ye have seen, 


The winged shapes around it grew 


Aught more gentle, mild, and bright, 


Enchanted as they heard : 


Aught more dear to angels' sight, 


It was the bird of Hope — my love — 


Hath there been ; 


It was Hope's golden bird ! 


Or more innocent and fair, 




Than an infant's earliest prayer 1 


And ever of to-morrow 




The syren song began ! — 


Tell me, ye flowers that meet 


Ah, what on earth 's so musical 


By the valley or the stream, 


As love and hope to man 1 — 


Have ye incense half so sweet, — 


I listen'd, thinking still of thee, 


Fragrance in your rich retreat, — 


And of thy promised word : 


That ye deem 


It was the bird of Hope — sweet love — 


Half so dear to Heaven's care. 


It was Hope's golden bird ! 


As an infant's quiet prayer ? 




Though ours should be a cottage home, 


Speak, and tell me, thou, Time, 


From pride and pomp apart ; 


From the coming of the Word, 


The truest wealth for happiness 


Aught more holy, more sublime, 


Is still a faithful heart. 


From the heart of any clime, 


And thus it sung — " unloving wealth 


Hast thou heard, 


Would never be preferred .'" — 


Than the voice ascending there. 


It was the bird of Hope — sweet love — 


Than that lowly infint's prayer ] 


It was Hope's golden bird ! 



SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 



Edward Lytton Bulwer, now Sir Edward 
BuLWER Lytton, is the youngest son of" Gene- 
ral Bulwer of Heydon Hall, Norfolk, and 
Elizabeth, daughter of Henry W. Lytton, 
Esquire, Herts. He was born in 1803, and 
his father dying during his infanc)% the care 
of his youth devolved upon his mother, who 
sent him to Cambridge to complete his edu- 
cation. His first appearance as an author was 
in 1826, when he published a volume of verses 
entitled Weeds and Wild Flowers, including 
a Poem on Sculpture which obtained the chan- 
cellor's medal at the Cambridge commence- 
ment in 1825. In the following year ap- 
peared O'Neil or the Rebel and other Poems, 
and his first prose work, Falkland. Neither 
of these books attracted much attention, but 
Pelham, which was printed in 1828, placed 
him in the front rank of living novelists. It 
was rapidly followed by The Disowned, De- 
vereux, Paul Clifford, Eugene Aram, The 
Student, England and the English, Athens, 
The Pilgrims of the Rhine, The Last Days 
of Pompeii, Rienzi, Ernest Maltravers, Alice, 
Night and Morning, Zanoni. The Last of the 
Barons, and three or four volumes of critical 
and miscellaneous articles, originally pub- 
in The New Monthly Magazine and The 
Monthly Chronicle while he was editor of 
those periodicals. These, with a few politi- 
cal tracts, constitute, I believe, all his ac- 
knowledged works in prose. 

Besides his poems already mentioned, and 
his dramas. Sir Bulwer Lytton has written 
The Siamese Twins, Ismael an Oriental Tale, 
Leila or the Siege of Grenada, Historical 
Odes, The Ill-omened Marriage, Eva and 
other Tales and Poems, and a Translation of 
the Poems and Ballads of Schiller, the last 
of which appeared in the spring of 1844. His 
dramatic writings are the Lady of Lyons, The 
Duchess de la Valliere, Richelieu, The Sea 
Captain, Money, and Cromwell, all of which 
but the last have been acted successfully in 
the British and American theatres. 

Sir Bulwer Lytton and James Sheridan 

Knowles, though not the best, are the most 

popular dramatic poets of the age. Both have 
51 



produced fine acting plays and clever analyses 
of character; and in the works of both may 
be found isolated passages of genuine poetry. 
Knowles has the deepest feeling and purest 
sentiment; Lytton the most sparkling wit 
and most poetical expression. Altogether 
they are nearly equal in merit as in success. 

Sir Bulwer Lytton is the greatest of liv- 
ing English novelists, and it is probable that 
he will always be ranked among the classic 
writers of his country. In the Lady of Lyons 
he well expresses his cardinal maxim, "There 
is a future left to all men who have the virtue 
to repent and the energy to atone." It had 
been well if in many instances he had illus- 
trated this beneficent idea by better examples. 
The general tendency of his works is immoral, 
and they are nearly all imbued with a sickly 
and shallow philosophy. He has no faith in 
humanity. He breaks dowp the barriers be- 
tween right and wrong. By presenting vice 
divested of its grossness he renders it attract- 
ive. Instead of holding up virtue as the only 
source of felicity, he makes his criminals 
happy men, and challenges for them in every 
condition our admiration. 

The novels in which he has shown most 
originality and power are Eugene Aram, The 
Last Days of Pompeii, Night and Morning, 
Ernest Maltravers, Zanoni, and Paul Clifford, 
the last of which is among the most depraving 
books produced in this age. Athens, its Rise 
and Fall, is a work in which he has exhibited 
more scholarship and perhaps a higher order 
of talent than in any thing else. A sequel to 
the two volumes already published is to fol- 
low, comprising a history of Athenian philo- 
sophy, manners, and customs. 

He has added very little to his reputation 
by any of his poetical writings except his 
dramas. Some of his shorter pieces, how- 
ever, have simplicity and epigrammatic point. 

Bulwer, entered the House of Commons at 
an early age, and has been a liberal and con- 
sistent politician. He was made a baronet 
under the Melbourne administration, and as- 
sumed the name of Lytton on the death of 
a relative in 1844. 



2l2 



401 



402 



SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 



CROMWELL'S SOLILOQUY OVER THE 
DEAD BODY OF CHARLES. 

Charles sleeps, and feels no more the grinding 
cares, 
The perils and the doubts, that wait on Powek. 
For him no more the uneasy day, — the night 
At war with slee[) ! for him are hush'd at last 
Loud Hate and hollow Love. Reverse thy law, 
O blind Compassion of the human heart! [not, 
And let not Death, which feels not, sins not, weeps 
Rob Life of all that Suffering asks from Pity. — 

Lo I what a slender barrier parts in twain 
The presence of the breathing and the dead, 
The vanquisher and victim ; the firm foot 
Of lusty strength, and the unmoving mass 
Of that all strength must come lo. Yet once more, 
Ere the grave closes on that solemn dust, 
Will I survey what men have fear'd to look on. 

[//c Uraws aside the curtains — the coffin of the King 
lighted by tapers— Cromwell lifts the pall.^ 

'Tis a firm frame ; the sinews strongly knit, 
The chest deep-set and broad ; save some graj' hairs 
Saddening those locks of love, no sign of age ! 
Had nature been his executioner. 
Hi would have oh f lived ine ! And to this end — 
This narrow empire — this unpeopled kingdom — 
This six feet realm — the over lust of sway [will 
Hath been the guide ! He would have stretch'd his 
O'er that unlimited world which men's souls are! 
Fetlcr'd the earth's pure air — for Freedom is 
That air to honest lips ; — and here he lies, 
In dust most eloquent — to after-time 
A never silent oracle for Kings ! — 
Was this the hand that strain'd within its grasp 
So haught a sceptre ? — this the shape that wore 
Majesty like a garment] Spurn that clay, 
It can resent not : speak of royal crimes. 
And it can frown not: schemeless lies the brain 
Whose thoughts were sources of such fearful deeds. 
What things are we, Lord, when at thy will 
A worm like this could shake the mighty world ! 
A few years since, and in the port was moor'd 
A bark to far Columbia's forests bound ; 
And I was one of those indignant hearts 
Pantinj for exile in the thirst of freedom ; 
Then, that pale clay (poor clay that was a King!) 
Forb;Hle my parting, in the wanton pride 
Of vain command, and with a fated sceptre 
Waved back the shadow of the death to come. 
Here stands that baffled and forbidden wanderer, 
Loftiest amid the wrecks of ruin'd empire, 
Beside the coffm of a headless King ! 
He thrall'd my fate — I have prepared his doom: 
He made me captive — lo ! his narrow cell ! 

\Jidvancing to the front of the staged 
So hands unseen do fashion forth the earth 
Of our frail schemes into our funeral urns ; 
So walking, dream-led in life's sleep, our steps 
Mov^ iiiindfold to the scaffold, or the throne ! — 
Ay, tothe turone! From that dark thought I strike 
The light which cheers me onward to my goal. 
Wild though the night, and angry though the winds, 
High o'er the billows of the battling sea 
My spirit, like a bark, sweeps on to fortune ! 



CROMWELL'S REFLECTIONS 
"KILLING NO MURDER." 



ON 



Some devil wrote this book! the words are daggers. 
Lawful to slay me ! Slaughter proved a virtue ! 
Writ in cold blood ; the logic of the butcher ; 
So calm, and yet so deadly ! I'll no more of it ! — 
\Advancea to thefront of the stage mith the bookinhis handi] 
" Killing xo MtiunEn !" so this book is call'd ; 
It summons that great England whom this hand 
Hath made the crown of nations, to destroy me ! 
" At board, at bed," — so runs the text, — " let Death 
Be at his side ; albeit to the clouds 
Reaches his head, the axe is at his root ; [well V " 
And men shail cry, 'Where now the lofty Crom- 
Vain threats, I scorn ye! Yet 'tis ably writ; 
And these few leaves will stir a storm of passion 
In the deep ocean of the popular heart. 
We men of deeds are idiots, to despise 
The men of books — for books are still the spells 
Of the earth's sorcery, and can shape an army 
Out of the empty air. Wo?-ds father actions, 
And are the fruitful yet inysterious soil [harvest, 
Whence fhi^igs bud forth, grow ripe, and burst to 
And when they rot away, 'tis words receive 
The germs they leave us, and so reproduce 
Life out of Death — the everlasting cycle ! 
The Past hut lives in words ! A thousand ages 
Were blank if hooks had not evoked their ghosts, 
And kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us 
From fleshless lips. So what will Cromwell be 
To times unborn, but some dim abstract thought 
That would not be if books were not 1 Our toil — 
Our glory — struggles — life, that sea of action, 
Whose waves are stormy deeds — all come to this, 
A thing for scholars, in a silent closet. 
To case in periods, and embalm in ink : 
Making the memory of earth-trampling men. 
The poor dependant on a pedant's whim ! 
It is enough to make us laugh to scorn 
Our solemn selves ! But Fate whirls on the bark. 
And the rough gale sweeps from the rising tide 
The lazy cabn of thought. 

lifter a pause, again opens the book."] Can I believe 
These lines, and doubt all faith for evermore ? 
" My muster-roll — my guards — my palace train" — 
It saith, " contain the names of freemen sworn 
To slay the tyrant!" I appeal from man, 
To thee, the Lord of Hosts! Out, damned thing! 

[Flings away the book.'] 
Thou hast taught me one deep lesson, and I thank 
Power must be guarded by the fiery sword ; [thee: 
Death shall be at my side — sure death to all 
Whose treason stings existence to a curse. 
I've been too merciful — too soft of soul — 
Till bad men, drunk and sated with forgiveness. 
Grow mad with crime. The gibbet and the axe 
Shall henceforth guard the sceptre and the orb; 
And Law put on the majesty of Terror. 
Why what a state is this, when men who toil 
Daily for England cannot sleep of nights! 
Three nights I have not slept ! I know my cure ; 
The blood of traitors makes my anodyne ! 
And in the silence of a trembling world, 
I will lie down, and learn to sleep again. 



SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 



403 



RICHELIEU'S SOLILOQUY. 

" Ix silence and at night, the conscience feels 
That life should soar to nobler ends than power." 
So sayest thou, sage and sober moralist ! 
But wert thou tried! Sublime philosoph}', 
Thou art the patriarch's ladder, reaching heaven, 
And bright with beck'ning angels; but, alas! 
We see thee, like the patriarch, but in dreams. 
By the first step, dull-slumbering on the earth. 
I am not happy ! with the Titan's lust 
I woo'd a goddess, and I clasp a cloud. 
When I ajn dust, my name shall, like a star, 
Shine through wan space, a glory ; and a prophet 
Whereby pale seers shall from their atjry towers 
Con all the ominous signs, benign or evil, 
That make the potent astrologue of kings. 
But shall the future judge me by the ends 
That I have wrought; or by the dubious means 
Through which the stream of my renown hath run 
Into the many-voiced, unfathomed Time ! 
Foul in its bed lie weeds and heaps of slime ; 
And with its waves when sparkling in the sun, 
Ofttimes the secret of rivulets that swell 
Its might of waters, blend the hues of blood. 
Yet are my sins not those of circumstaxce, 
That all-pervading atmosphere, wherein 
Our spirits, like the unsteady lizard, take 
The tints that colour and the food that nurtures 1 
Oh I ye, whose hour-glass shifts its tranquil sands 
In tlie unvcx'd silence of a student's cell ; 
Ye, whose untempted hearts have never toss'd 
Upon the dark and stormy tides where life 
Gives battle to the elements; and man [weight 
Wrestles with man for some sligiu plank, whose 
Will bear but one, while round the desperate wretch 
The hungry billows roar, and the fierce Fate, 
Like some huge monster, dim-seen through the surf. 
Waits him who drops ; ye safe and formal men. 
Who write the deeds, and wiih unfevcrish hand 
Weigh in nice scales the motives of the great, 
Ye cannot know what ye have never tried ! 
History preserves only the fleshless bones 
Of what w-e are; and by the mocking skull 
The would-be wise pretend to guess the features ! 
Without the roundness and the glow of life, 
How hideous is the skeleton ! Without 
The colourings and humanities that clothe 
Our errors, the anatomists of schools 
Can make our memory hideous ! I have wrought 
Great uses out of evil tools ; and they 
In the time to come may bask beneath the light 
Which I have stolen from the angry gods, 
And warn their sons against the glorious theft. 
Forgetful of the darkness which it broke. 
I have shed blood, but I have had no foes 
Save those the state had ; if my wrath was deadly, 
'Tis that I felt my country in my veins. 
And smote her sons as Brutus smote his own. 
And yet I am not happy ; blanch'd and sear'd 
Before my time ; breathing an air of hate, 
And seeing daggers in the eyes of men. 
And wasting powers that shake the thrones of earth 
In contest with the insects: bearding kings 
And braved by lackeys ; murder at my bed ; 



And lone amid the multitudinous web. 

With the dread three — that are the fates who hold 

The woof and shears — the monk, the spy, the 

headsman. 
And this is power ! Alas ! I am not happy. 

l-^fler a pause.^ 
And yet the Nile is fretted by the weeds 
Its rising roots not up ; but never yet 
Did one least barrier by a ripple vex 
My onward tide, unswept in sport away. 
Am I so ruthless, then, that I do hate 
Them who hate me T Tush, tush ! I do not hate; 
Nay, I forgive. 'J'he statesman writes the doom, 
But the priest sends the blessing. I i'orgive them. 
But I destroy ; forgiveness is mine own. 
Destruction is the state's ! For private life, 
Scripture the guide; for public, Machiavel. 
Would fortune serve me if the Heaven were wroth ? 
For chance makes half my greatness. I was born 
Beneath the aspect of a bright-ej'ed star, 
And my triumphant adamant of soul 
Is but the fix'd persuasion of success. 
Ah ! here ! that spasm ! again ! How life and death 
Do wrestle for me momently ! And yet 
The king looks pale. I shall outlive the king ! 
And then thou insolent Austrian, who dost gibe 
At the ungainly, gaunt, and daring lover. 
Sleeking thy looks to silken Buckingham, 
Thou shalt — no matter! I have outlived love. 
Oh beautiful, all golden, gentle youth ! 
Making thy palace in the careless front 
And hopeful eye of man — ere yet the soul 
Hath lost the memories which (so Plato dream'd) 
Breathed glory from the earlier star it dwelt in — 
Oh ! for one gale from thine exulting morning, 
Stining amid the roses, where of old 
Love shook the dew-drops from his glancing hair! 
Could I recall the past, or had not set 
The prodigal treasures of the bankrupt soul 
In one slight bark upon the shoreless sea; 
The yoked steer, after his day of toil, 
Forgets the goad, and rests : to me alike 
Or day or night: ambition has no rest! 
Shall I resign 1 who can resign himself? 
For custom is ourself ; as drink and food 
Become our bone and flesh, the aliments [dreams, 
Nurturing our nobler part, the mind — thoughts, 
Passions, and aims, in the revolving cycle 
Of the great alchymy, at length are made 
Our mind itself; and yet the sweets of leisure. 
An honour'd home, far from these base intrigues, 
An eyrie on the hcaven-kiss'd heights of wisdom. 



AMBITION AND GLORY. 

Alas! ourglories float between the earthand heaven 
Like clouds which seem pavilions of the sun, 
And are the playthings of the casual wind ; 
Still, like the cloud which drops on unseen crags 
The dews the wild flower feeds on, our ambition 
May from its airy height drop gladness down 
On unsuspected virtue ; and the flower 
May bless the cloud when it hath pass'd away ! 



404 



SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 



LAST DAYS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.* 

Rise from thy bloody grave, 

Thou soft Medusa of the fated line.j- 
Whose evil beauty look'd to death the brave ; 

Discrowned queeri, around whose passionate 
shame 
Terror and grief the palest flowers entwine, 

That ever veil'd the ruins of a name 

With the sweet parasites of song divine ! 
Arise, sad ghost, arise, 

And if revenge outhve the tomb, [doom ! 

Thou art avenged. Behold the doomer brought to 
Lo, where thy mighty murdress lies, 

The sleepless couch, the sunless room. 
And, quell'd the eagle eye and lion mien. 
The wo-worn shadow of the Titan queen ! 

There, sorrow-stricken, to the ground, 

Alike by night and day. 
The heart's blood from the inward wound 

Ebbs silently away. 
And oft she turns from face to face 

A sharp and eager gaze. 
As if the memory sought to trace 
The s\2,n of some lost dwelling-place. 

Beloved in happier days ; 
Ah, what the clew supplies 

In the cold vigil of a hireling's eyes ! 

Ah, sad in childless age to weep alone, [own! 

And start and gaze, to find no sorrow save our 
! Oh soul, thou speedest to thy rest away. 

But not upon the pinions of the dove; 
When death draws nigh, how miserable they 

Who have outlived all love ! 

As on the solemn verge of night 

Lingers a weary moon. 
She wanes, the last of every glorious light 

That bathed with splendour her majestic noon: 
The stately stars that, clustering o'er the i.s!e, 

LuU'd into glittering rest the subject sea ; 
Gone the great masters of Italian wile. 
False to the world beside, but true to thee ! 

Burleigh, the subtlest builder of thy fame. 

The gliding craft of winding Walsinghame; 
They who exalted yet before thee bow'd ; 

And that more dazzling chivalry, the band 

That made thy court a faery land. 

In which thou wert enshrined to reign alone, 

The Gloriana of the diamond throne : 

All gone, and left thee sad amid the cloud ! 

To their great sires, to whom thy youth was known, 

Who from thy smile, as laurels from the sun, 
Drank the immortal greenness of renown. 
Succeeds the cold lip-homage scantly won 
From the new race whose hearts already bear 
The wise man's offerings to the unworthy heir 
There, specious Bacon's unimpassion'd brow. 
And crook-back'd Cecil's ever earthward eyes 

* " Her deliaht is to sit in the dark, and sometimes, 
witlislieddingtearSjto bewail Kssex."— Contcmporaiteous 
Correxpondeiice. 

f Mary Stuart — "The soft Medusa" is an expression 
strikingly applied to her in her own day. 



Watching the glass in which the sands run low ; 

But deem not fondly there 
To weep the fate or pour th' averting prayer 
Have come those solemn spies ! 
Lo, at the regal gate 
The impatient couriers wait ; 
, To speed from hour to hour the nice account 
That registers the grudged unpilied sighs 
Which yet must joy delay, before 
The eituart's tottering step shall mount 
The last great Tudor's throne, red with his mo- 
ther's gore ! 
Oh piteous mockery of all pomp thou art. 
Poor child of clay, worn out with toil and years ! 
As, layer by layer, the granite of the heart 
Dissolving, melteth to the weakest tears 
That ever village maiden shed above 
The grave that robb'd her quiet world of love. 
Ten days and nights upon that floor 

Those weary limbs have lain ; 
And every hour but added more 

Of heaviness to pain. 
As gazing into dismal air 
She sees the headless phantom there. 
The victim round whose image twined 
The last wild love of womankind ; 
That love which, in its dire excess. 
Will blast where it can fail to bless. 
And, like the lightning, flash and fade 
In gloom along the ruins it has made. 
'Twere sad to see from those stern eyes 

'J'he unheeded anguish feebly flow ; 
And hear the broken word that dies 

In moanings faint and low ; 
But sadder still to mark, the while, 
The vacant stare, the marble smile. 
And think, that goa! of glory won, 

How slight a shade between 
The idiot moping in the sun 
And England's giant queen !* 

Call back the gorgeous past ! 

Lo, England white-robed for a holyday ! 
While, choral to the clarion's kingly blast, 
Peals shout on shout along the virgin's way ; 

As through the swarming streets rolls on the long 
array. 
Mary is dead ! liOok from your fire-won homes, 
Exulting martyrs ! on the mount shall rest 

Truth's ark at last ! the avenging Lutheran comes, 
And clasps the Book ye died for to her breast! 

With her the flower of all the land, 
The high-born gallants ride, 

And, ever nearest of the band, 

With watchful eye and ready hand. 
Young Dudley's form of pride ! 

Ah, e'en in that exulting hour 

liove half allures the soul from power, 

And blushes half-suppress'd betray 
The woman's hope and fear ; 

liike blooms which in the early May 

Bud forth beneath a timorous ray, 

* " It was after labnuriiig for nearly three weeks under 
a morbid melancholy, which brought on a stupor not un- 
mixed with some indications of a disordered fancy, that 
the queen expired. — Letter to Edmund Lambert. 



SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 



405 



And mark the mellowing year, 
While steals the sweetest of all worship, paid 
Less to the monarch than the maid. 
Melodious on the ear! 
Call back the gorgeous past ! 

The lists are set, the trumpets sound. 
Bright eyes, sweet judges, throned around; 
And stately on the glittering ground 
The old chivahic life ! 
" Forward." The signal word is given ; 

Beneath the shock the greensward shakes ; 
The lusty cheer, the gleaming spear, 
The snow-plume's failing flakes. 
The liery joy of strife ! 
Thus, when, from out a changeful heaven 
O'er waves in eddying tumult driven 
A stormy smile is cast. 
Alike the gladsome anger takes 
The sunshine and the blast! 
Who is the victor of the day 1 
Thou of the delicate form, and golden hair, 
And manhood glorious in its midst of May ; 
Thou who upon thy shield of argent bearest 
The bold device, " The loftiest is the fairest !" 
As bending low thy stainless crest, 
"The vestal throned by the west" 
Accords the old Provencal crown 
Which blends her own with thy renown ; 
Arcadian Sidney, nursling of the muse, 
Flower of fair chivalry, whose bloom was fed 
With daintiest Castaly's most silver dews, 
x\las ! how soon thy amaranth leaves were shed ; 
Born, what the Ausonian minstrel dream'd to be 
Time's knightly epic pass'd from earth with thee! 

Call back the gorgeous past ! 

Where, bright and broadening to the main. 

Rolls on the scornful river ; 
Stout hearts beat high on Tilbury's plain, 
Our Marathon for ever ! 
No breeze above, but on the mast 
The pennon shook as with the blast. 
Forth from the cloud the day-god strode. 
O'er bristling hehns the splendour glow'd. 
Leaped the loud joy from earth to heaven, 
As, through the ranks asunder riven, 
The warrior-woman rode ! 
Hark, thrilling through the armed line 
The martial accents ring, 
" Though mine the woman's form, yet mine 
The heart of England's king !"* 
Wo to the island and the maid ! 
The pope has j)reach'd the new crusade, 
His sons have caught the fiery zeal; 
The monks are merry in Castile ; 

Bold Parma on the main ; 
And through the deepexidting swee 
The thunder-steeds of Spain. 
What meteor rides the sulphurous gale 1 
The flames have caught the giant sail ! 
Fierce Drake is grappling prow to prow ; 
God and St. George for victory now ! 

* "I know I have but the body of a weuk atul feeble 
vi'oni:in, but I h'lVf thp heirt of a kini', and of a king of 
England too." — Elizabeth's harangue at Tilbury Camp. 



Death in the battle and the wind ; 
Carnage before and storm behind ; 
Wild shrieks are heard above the hurtling roar 
By Orkney's rugged strands and Erin's ruthless 
shore. 
Joy to the island and the maid ! 
Pope Sixtus wept the last crusade ; 
His sons consumcil before his zeal. 
The monks are woful in Castile ; 

Your monument the main. 
The glaive and gale record your tale, 
Ye thunder-steeds of Spain ! 

Turn f mm the gorgeous past: 
Its lonely ghost thou art ! 
A tree, that, in the world of bloom, 
Droops, spectral in its leafless gloom, 

Before the grinding blast; 
But art thou fallen then so low 1 
Art thou so desolate 1 wan shadow. No ! [porta', 
Crouch'd, suppliant by the grave's unclosing 
Love, which proclaims thee human, bids thee 

know 
A truth more lofty in thy lowliest hour 
Than shallowest glory taught to deafen'd power, 
"What's humax is immortal!" 
'Tis sympathy which makes sublime! 
Never so reverent in thy noon of time 
As now, when o'er thee hangs the midnight pall; 
No comfort, pomp ; and wisdom no protection ; 
Hope's "cloud-capp'd towers and solemn temples" 

gone — 
Mid memory's v\-recks, eternal and alone ; 
Type of the woman-deity Affkction ; 
That only Eve which never knew a fall. 
Sad as the dove, but, like the dove, surviving all! 



THE LANGUAGE^ OF THE EYES. 

Those eves, those eyes, how full of heaven they are. 
When the calm twilight leaves the heaven most 
holy. 
Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star 
Did ye drink in your liquid melancholy ? 

Tell me, beloved eyes ! 

Was it from yon lone orb, that ever by 

The quiet moon, like Hope on Patience, hovers, 

The star to which hath sped so many a sigh. 
Since lutes in Lesbos hallowed it to lovers'? 
Was that your fount, sweet eyes] 

Ye sibyl books, in which the truths foretold, 

Inspire the heart, your dreaming priest, with 
gladness. 
Bright alchemists that turn to thoughts of gold 
The leaden cares ye steal away from sadness. 
Teach only me, sweet eyes ! 

Hush ! when I ask ye how at length to gain 
The cell where love the sleeper yet lies hidden, 

Loose not those arch lips from their rosy chain ; 

Be every answer, save your own, forbidden — 

Feelings art words for eyes ! 



406 



SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 



EURIPIDES. 

LoxE, mid tlie loftier wonders of the past, [age; 

Thou stand'st — more household to the modern 
In a less stately mould thy thoughts were cast 

Than thy twin masters of the Grecian stage. 
Thou mark'st that change in manners when the 
frown 

Of the vast Titans vanish'd from the earth, 
When a more soft philosophy stole down 

From the dark heavens to man's familiar hearth. 
With thee, caine love and woman's influence o'er 

Her sterner lord ; and poesy till then 
A sculpture, warmed to painting; what before 

Glass'd but the dim-seen gods, grew now to men 
Clear mirrors, and the passions took their place, 

Where a serene if solemn awe had made 
The scene a temple to the elder race : 

The struggles of humanity became 
Not those of Titan with a god, nor those 

Of the great heart with that unbodied name 
By which our ignorance would explain our woes 

And justify the heavens, — the ruthless Fate; 
But truer to the human life, thine art [debate. 

Made thought with thought and will with will 
And placed the god and Tit.in in the heart; 

Thy Phcedra, and thy pale Medea were 
The birth of that more subtle wisdom, which 

Dawn'd in the world with Socrates, to bear 
Its last, most precious offspring in the rich 

And genial soul of Shakspeare. And for this 
Wit blamed the living, dullness taunts the dead. 

And yet the Pythian did not speak amiss 
When in thy verse the latent truths she read, 

And hailed thee wiser than thy tribe. Of thee 
All genius in our softer times hath been 

Tlie grateful echo, and thy soul we see 
Still through our tears — upon the later scene. 
Doth the Italian, for his frigid thought 

Steal but a natural pathos, — hath the Gaul 
Something of passion to his phantoms taught. 

Ope but thy page — and, lo, the source of all! 
But that which made thee wiser than the schools 

Was the long sadness of a much-wrong'd life ; 
The sneer of satire, and the gibe of fools. 

The broken hearth-gods, and the perjured wife. 
For sorrow is the messenger between 

Tlie poet and men's bosoms : — Genius can 
Fill with unsympathizing gods the scene. 

But grief alone can teach us what is man! 



A SPENDTHRIFT. 

You have outrun your fortune; 
I blame you not, that you would be a beggar; 
Each to his taste! But I do charge you, sir. 
That, being beggar'd, you would coin false moneys 
Out of that crucible call'd Dkbt. To live 
On means not yours; be brave in silks and laces, 
Gallant in steeds, splendid in banquets ; all 
Not I/ours, ungiven, uninherited, unpaid for ; 
This is to be a trickster, and to filch 
Men's art and labour which to them is wealth, 
Life, daily bread; quitting all scores with, "Friend, 



You're troublesome !" Why this, forgive me, 
Is what, when done with a less dainty grace. 
Plain folks call " Theft .'" You owe eight thousand 

pistoles. 
Minus one crown, two liards ! 



PATIENCE AND HOPE. 

Ui'ox a barren steep. 

Above a storni}^ deep, 
I saw an angel watching the wild sea ; 

Earth was that barren steep. 

Time was that stormy deep, 
And the opposing shore, eternity ! 

" Why dost thou watch the wave ? 

Thy feet the waters lave ; 
The tide ingulfs thee if thou dost delay." 

" Unscath'd I watch the wave, 

Time not the angels' grave, 
I wait until the ocean ebbs away !" 

Hush'd on the angel's breast, 

I saw an infant rest, 
Smiling upon the gloomy hell below. 

" What is the infant prest, 

O angel, to thy breast?" 
" The child God gave me in the long-ago ? 

" Mine all upon the earth — 

The angel's angel-birth. 
Smiling all terror from the howling wild !" 

— Never may I forget 

The dream that haunts me yet, 
Of Patience nursing Hope — the angel and the child! 



LOVE AND FAME. 

It was the May when I was born. 

Soft moonlight through the casement stream'd, 
And still, as it were yester-morn, 

I dream the dream I dieam'd. 
I saw two forms from Fairy Land, 

Along the moonbeams gently glide, 
Until they halted, hand in hand, 

My infant couch beside. 

With smiles, the cradle bending o'er, 

I heard their whispered voices lireathe — 
The one a crown of diamond wore. 

The one a myrtle wreath : 
"Twin brotliers from the better rlime, 

A poet's spell hath lured to thee ; 
Say which shall, in the coming time, 

Thy chosen fairy be ?" 

I stretch'd my hand, as if my grasp 

Could snatch the toy from either brow ; 
And found a leaf within my clasp, 

One leaf — as fragrant now ! 
If both in life may not be won. 

Be mine, at least, the gentler brother — 
For he whose life deserves the one. 

In death may gain the other. 



SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 



407 



THE LAST CRUSADER. 

Left to the Saviour's conquering foes, 
The land that girds the Saviour's grave ; 

Where Godfrey's crozier-standard rose, 
He saw the crescent-banner wave. 

There, o'er the gently-hroken vale. 

The halo-Ught on Zion glow'd ; 
There Kcdron, with a voice of wail, 

By tombs* of saints and heroes flow'd ; 

There still the olives silver o'er 

The dimness of the distant hill; 
There still the (lowers that Sharon bore, 

Calm air with many an odour till. 

Slowly The Last CiiusADEn eyed 

The towers, the mount, the stream, the plain, 

And tliought of those whose blood had dyed 
The earth with crimson streams in vain ! 

He thought of that sublime array, 
The hosts, that over land and deep 

The hermit marsliaird on their way. 

To see those tovi'ers, and halt to weep !-j- 

Resign'd the loved, familiar lands. 
O'er burning wastes the cross to bear, 

And rescue from the Paynim's hands 
No empire save a sepulchre ! 

And vain the hope, and vain the loss. 
And vain the famine and the strife; 

In vain tlie faitli that bore the cross. 
The valour prodigal of life. 

And vain was Richard's lion-soul. 

And guileless Godfrey's patient mind — 

Like waves on shore, they reach'd the goal. 
To die, and leave no trace behind ! 

" O God !" the last Ousader cried, 
" And art thou careless of thine own 1 

For us thy Son in Salem died. 

And Salem is the scoffer's throne! 

"And shall we leave, from age to age. 
To godless hands the holy tomb 1 

Against thy saints the heathen rage — 

Launch forth thy lightnings, and consume !" 

Swift, as he spoke, before his sight 

A form fiash'd, white-robed, from above; 

All Heaven was in those looks of light, 
But Heaven, whose native air is love. 

" Alas !" the solemn vision said, 

" 77/ y God is of the shield and spear — 

To bless the quick and raise the dead, 
The Saviour-God descended here ! 

"Ah! know'st thou not the very name^: 
Of S.dem bids thy carnage cease — 

A symbol in itself to claim 

God's people to a house of peace ! 

♦ The valley, Jihophaphnt, tliroiish which rolls the tor- 
rent of the K"drnti, is stiirtd-d wiih totnlia. 

+ See Tasso, G-r. I.ih. cant. iii. 81. vi. 

X The siaiiifii-ation of ilie name "Silein," as written 
by the Hebrews, is ihe Al»ide, or People, of Peace. 



" Ask not the Father to reward 

The hearts that seek, through blood, the Son ; 
O warrior ! never by the sword 

The Saviour's Holy Land is won !" 



THE SABBATH. 

FnESH glides the brook and blows the gale, 
Yet yonder halts the quiet mill ; 

The whirring wheel, the rushing sail, 
How motionless and still ! 

Six days stern labour shuts the poor 
From natu e'.s careless banquet-hall ; 

The seventh an Angel opes the door, 
And, smiling, welcomes all ! 

A Father's tender mercy gave 

This holy respite to the breast. 
To breathe the gale, to watch the wave, 

And know — the wheel may rest! 

Six days of toil, poor child of Cain, 

Thy strength thy master's slave must be ; 

The seventh, the limbs escape the chain — 
A God hath made thee free ! 

The fields that yester-morning knew 
Thy footsteps as their serf survey ; 

On thee, as them, descends the dew. 
The baptism of the day. 

Fresh glides the brook and blows the gale, 
But yonder halts the quiet mill ; 

The whirring wheel, the rushing sail. 
How motionless and still ! 

So rest, — O weary heart ! — but, lo. 

The church-spire, glistening up to heaven. 

To warn thee where thy thoughts should go 
The day thy God hath given ! 

Lone through the landscape's solemn rest, 
The spire its moral points on High. 

O, Soul, at peace within the breast, 
Rise, mingling with the sky ! 

They tell thee, in their dreaming school, 
Of power from old dominion hurl'd. 

When rich and poor, with juster rule, 
Shall share the alter'd world. 

Alas! since time itself began, 

That fable hath but fool'd the hour; 

Each age that ripens power in man. 
But subjects man to power. 

Yet every da_v in seven, at least. 

One bright republic shall be known ; — 

Man's world awhile hath surely ceas'd, 
When God proclaims his own ! 

Six days may rank divide the poor, 
O Dives, from thy banquet hall — 

The seventh iho Father opes the door. 
And holds his feast for all ! 



HENRY TAYLOR. 



I KNOW nothing of the personal history of 
Mr. Taylor, more than that he is the author 
of Philip Van Artevelde and Edwin the Fair, 
two poems, of which the first was published 
in 1834 and the last in 1842. 

Philip Van Artevelde is founded on events 
which occurred in Flanders near the close of 
the fourteenth century. It consists of two 
plays, with the Lay of Elena, an interlude, 
and is about as long as six such pieces as are 
adapted to the stage. It is a historical ro- 
mance, in the dramatic and rhythmical form, 
in which truth is preserved, so far as the prin- 
cipal action is concerned, with the exception 
of occasional expansions and compressions of 
time. 

The ground-work of Edwin the Fair is in 
the history of the Anglo-Saxons. On his ac- 
cession Edwin finds his kingdom divided into 
two parties, one adhering to the monks and 
the other to the secular clergy. He imme- 
diately takes part against the monks, ejecting 
them from the benefices they had usurped, 
and prepares to ally himself with his cousin 
Elgiva, whose family is the chief support of 
the secular cause. His first effort is to bring 
about his coronation, notwithstanding the 
opposition of Dunstan, (the real hero of the 
poem,) and Odo, the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury. In this he succeeds, and his marriage 
with Elgiva is solemnized at the same time. 
Then commences the earliest important war 
of the church against the state in England. 
Dunstan causes the queen to be seized and 
imprisoned; the marriage is declared void; 
and each party appeals to arms. In the end 
Edwin and Elgiva are slain, and Dunstan is 
triumphant. Tiiis play, in its chief charac- 
teristics, is like its predecessor, though less 
interesting, and from the absence of "poetical 
justice" in its catastrophe, less satisfactory. 

Mr. Taylor contends that a poet must be a 
philosopher; and that no poetry of which 
sense is not the basis, though it may be ex- 
cellent in its kind, will long be regarded as 
poetry of the highest class. He considers 
Byron the greatest of the poets who have 

addressed themselves to the sentient proper- 

40S 



ties of the mind, but inferior to the few who 
have appealed to the perceptive faculties. He 
writes according to his own canons, nearly all 
of which are as just in respect to prose-as to 
poetry; and, as might be expected, much of 
his verse has little to distinguish it from prose 
but its rhythmical form. 

Mr. Taylor seems to me to excel nearly 
every contemporary poet as a delineator of 
character. The persons of his dramas are 
presented distinctly, and have 'a perfect con- 
sistency and unity. Nor are they all of the 
same family, as is the case with the creations 
of some writers, who appear under various 
dresses and names only to reproduce them- 
selves. The ambitious and fanatical monk, 
the weak-minded but uneorrupted king, the 
quiet scholar with his "tissue of illuminous 
dreams," the clear-sighted and resolute patriot, 
the unscrupulous demagogue, the brutal sol- 
dier, the courtly cavalier, are all drawn with 
clearness, and without more exaggeration than 
is necessary to the production of a due im- 
pression by any work of art. 

No educated person can read the works of 
Mr. Taylor without a consciousness that he 
is communing with a mind of a high order. 
They are reflective and dignified, and are 
written in pure and nervous English. The 
dialogue is frequently terse and impressive, 
nnd sometimes highly dramatic. Mr. Taylor 
has no sickly sentiment, and scarcely any 
pathos or passion ; but in his writings there 
are pleasant shows of feeling, fancy, and ima- 
gination which remind us that he might have 
been a poet of a difl^erent sort had he been 
governed by a different theory. His principal 
faults, so far as style is concerned, are occa- 
sional coarseness of expression, and inappro- 
priate or disagreeable imagery. He exhibits 
al«o a want of that delicacy and refinement 
of conduct and feeling in some of his charac- 
ters which would have resulted from a nicer 
sense of the beautiful and a more loving spirit 
in himself. 

Mr. Taylor will not perhaps he a popular 
poet, but with a " fit audience, though few," 
he will always be a favourite. 



HENRY TAYLOR. 



409 



THE LAY OF ELENA. 

He ask'd me had I yet forgot 

The mountains of my native land ] 
I sought an answer, but had not 

The words at my command. 
They would not come, and it was better so, 
For had I utter'd aught, my tears I know 
Had started at the word as free to flow. 

But I can answer when there'snone that hears ; 
And now if I should weep, none sees my tears : 
And in my soul the voice is rising strong. 
That speaks in solitude, — the voice of song. 

Yes, I remember well 

The land of many hues. 
Whose charms what praise can tell, 

Whose praise what heart refuse T 
Sublime, but neither bleak nor bare. 
Nor misty, are the mountains there, — 
Softly sublime, profusely fair ! 
Up to their summits clothed in green, 
And fruitful as the vales between, 

They lightly rise, 

And scale the skies. 
And groves and gardens still abound 

For where no shoot 

Could else take root. 
The peaks are shelved and terraced round; 
Earthward appear, in mingled growth, 

The mulberry and maize, — above 
The trellis'd vine extends to both 

The leafy shade they love. 
Looks out the white-wall'd cottage here, 
The lowly chapel rises near ; 
Far down the foot must roam to reach 
The lovely lake and bending beach ; 
Whilst chestnut green and olive gray 
Checker the steep and winding way. 

A bark is launch'd on Como's lake, 

A maiden sits abaft ; 
A little sail is loosed to take 

The night wind's breath, and waft 
The maiden and her bark away. 
Across the lake and up the bay. 
And what doth there that lady fair, 

Upon the wavelet toss'd 1 
Before her shines the evening star, 
Behind her in the woods afar 

The castle lights are lost. 
What doth she there ] The evening air 
Lifts her locks, and her neck is bare ; 
And the dews, that now are falling fast. 
May work her harm, or a rougher blast 

May come from yon<ler cloud. 
And that her bark might scarce sustain, 
So slightly built, — and why remain, 

And would she be allow'd 
To brave the wind and sit in the dew 
At night on the lake, if her mother knew ? 

Her mother sixteen years before 

Th3 burden of the babv bore; 

And though brought forth in joy, the day 

So jjyful, she was wont to say, 



In taking count of after years. 
Gave birth to fewer hopes than fears. 

For seldom smiled 

The serious child. 
And as she pass'd from childhood, grew 
More far-between those smiles, and few 

More sad and wild. 
And though she loved her father well, 

And though she loved her mother more. 
Upon her heart a sorrow fell. 

And sapp'd it to the core. 
And in her father's castle, nought 
She ever found of what she sought, 
And all her pleasure was to roam 
Among the mountains far from home, 
And through thick woods, and whcresoe'er 
She saddest felt, to sojourn there ; 
And oh ! she loved to linger afloat 
On the lonely lake in the little boat. 
It was not for the forms, — though fair. 
Though grand they were beyond compare, — 
It was not oidy for the forms 
Of hills in sunshine or in storms, 
Or only unrestrain'd to look 
On wood and lake, that she forsook 

By day or night 
Her home, and far 

Wander'd by light 
Of sun or star. 
It was to feel her fancy free, 

Free in a world without an end. 
With ears to hear, and eyes to see, 

And heart to apprehend. 
It was to leave the earth behind. 
And rove with liberated mind. 
As fancy led, or choice, or chance. 
Through wilder'd regions of romance. 
And many a castle would she build ; 
And all around the woods were fill'd 
With knights and squires that rode amain, 
With ladies saved and giants slain ; 
And as some contest vi'avered, came. 
With eye of fire and breath of flame, 
A dragon that in cave profound 
Had had his dwelling underground ; 
And he had closed the dubious fight. 
But that, behold ! there came in sight 
A hippogrilF, that wheel'd his flight 
Far in the sky, then swooping low, 
Brings to the field a fresher foe : 
Dismay 'd by this diversion, fly 
The dragon and his dear ally ; 
And now the victor knight unties 
The prisoner, his uidioped-for prize. 

And lo ! a beauteous maid is she. 
Whom they, in their unrighteous guise, 

Had fisten'd naked to a tree ! 
Much dreatning these, yet was she much awake 
To portions of things earthly, for the sake 
Whereof, as with a charm, away would flit 
The phantoms, and the fever intermit. 
Whatso' of earthly things presents a face 
Of outward beauty, or a form of grace. 
Might not escape her, hidden though it were 
From courtly cognisance; 'twas not with her 
2M 



410 



HENRY TAYLOR. 



As with the tribe who see not nature's boons 
Save by the festal lights of gay saloons ; 
Beauty in plain attire her heart could till — 
Yea, thoug-h in beggary, 'twas beauty still. 
Devoted thus to what was fair to sight, 
She loved too little else, nor this aright, 
And many disappointments could not cure 
This born obliquity, or break the lure [wise, 
Which this strong passion spread: she grew not 
Nor grows • experience with a world of sighs 
Purchased, and tears and heart-break, have been 

hers. 
And taught her nothing: where she err'd she errs. 

Be it avow'd, when all is said. 

She trod the path the many tread ; — 

She loved too soon in life ; her dawn 

Was bright with sunbeams, whence is drawn 

A sure prognostic that the day 

Will not unclouded pass away. 

Too young she loved, and he on whom 

Her tirst love lighted, in the bloom 

Of bovhood was, and so was graced 

With all that earliest runs to waste. 

Intelligent, loquacious, mild. 

Yet gay and spo:tive as a child, 

With feelings light and quick, that came 

And went, like flickerings of flame 

A soft demeanour, and a mind 

Bright and abundant in its kind, 

That, playing on the surface, made 

A rapid change of light and shade, 

Or if a darker hour perforce 

At times o'ertook him in his course. 

Still sparkling thick like glow-worms show'd 

Life was to him a summer's road, — 

Such was the youth to whom a love 

For grac3 and beaut}' far above 

Their due deserts, betray'd a heart 

Which might have else perform'd a prouder part. 

First love the world is wont to call 
The passion which was now her all. 
So be it call'd ; but be it known 

The feeling which possess'd her now 
Was novel in degree alone ; 
Love early mark'd her for his own ; 
Soon as the winds of heaven had blown 
Upon her, had the seed been sown 

In soil which needed not the plough ; 
And passion with her growth had grown. 

And strengthen'd with her strength, and how 
Could love be new, unless in name, 
Degree, and singleness of aim 1 
A tenderness had till'd her mind • 

Pervasive, viewless, undefined ; — 
As keeps the subtle fluid oft 
Its secret, gathering in the soft 
And sultry air, till felt at length 
In all its desolating strength, 
So silent, so devoid of dread. 
Her objectless affections spread ; 
Not wholly unemploy'd, but squandcr'd 
At large where'er her fancy wander'd ; 
Till one attraction, one desire 
Concentred all the scatter'd fire ; 



It broke, it burst, it blazed amain. 
It (lash'd its light o'er hill and plain, 
O'er earth below and heaven above, — 
And then it took the name of love. 

How fared that love ? the tale so old, 
So common, needs it to be told ! 
Bellagio's woods, ye saw it through 
From first accost to last adieu ; 
Its changes, seasons, you can tell, — 
At least you typify them well. 
First came the genial, hopeful spring, 
With bursting buds and birds that sing, 
And fast though fitful progress made 
To brighter suns and broader shade. 
Those brighter suns, that,broader shade. 
They came, and richly then array'd 
Was bough and sward, and all below 
Gladden'd by summer's equal glow. 
What next 1 a change is slowly seen, 

And deepeneth day by day 
The darker, soberer, sadder green 

Prevcnient to decay. 
Yet still at times through that green gloom. 
As sudden gusts might make them room. 

And lift the spray so light, 
The berries of the mountain-ash. 
Arching the torrent's foam and flash, 

Waved gladly into sight. 
But rare those short-lived gleamings grew, 
And wore the woods a sicklier hue ; 
Destruction now his phalanx forms 
Mid wailing winds and gathering storms ; 
And last comes winter's withering breath, 
Keen as desertion, cold — cold as the hand of death! 

Is the tale told 1 too well, alas ! 
Is pictured here what'came to pass. 
So long as light affections play'd 
Aroiuid their path, he loved the maid ; 
Loved in half-gay, half-tender mood. 
By passion touch'd, but not subdued ; 
Laugh'd at the flame he felt or lit ; 
Replied to tenderness with wit ; 
Sometimes when passion brighllier burn'd. 
Its tokens eagerly return'd. 
Then calm, supine, but pleased no less. 
Softly sustain'd each soft caress. 
She, watching with delight the while 
His half-closed eyes and gradual smile, 
(Slow pleasure's smile, how far more worth. 
More beautiful than smiles of mirth ! 
Seem'd to herself when back she cast 
A hurried look upon the past, 

As changed from what she then had been. 
As was the moon, who having run 
Her orbit through since this begun, 

Now shone " apparent queen." 
How dim a world, how blank a waste, 
A shadowy orb how faintly traced. 
Her crescent fancy first embraced ! 
How fair an orb, a world how bright. 
How fill'd with glory and with light 
Had now revealed itself to sight ! 
A glory of her essence grown, 
A light incorporate with her own ! 



Forth from such paradise of bUss 
Open the way and easy is, 

Like that renown'd of old ; 
And easier than the most was this, 
For they were sorted more amiss 

Tiian outward things foretold. 
The goddess, that with cruel mirth 
The daughters and the sons of earth 
Mismatches, hath a curuiing eye 
In twisting of a treacherous tic ; 
Nor is she backward to perceive 
That loftier minds to lower cleave 
With ampler love (as that which flows 
From a rich source) than these to those ; 
For still the source, not oliject, gives 
The daily food whweon love lives. 
The well-spring of his love was poor 
Compared to her's ; his gifts were fewer ; 
The total light that was in him 
Before a spark of her's grew dim ; 
Too high, too grave, too large, too deep, 
Her love could neither laugh nor sleep ; 
And thus it tired him ; his desire 
Was for a less consuming fire: 
He wish'd that she should love him well, 
Not wildly ; wish'd her passion's spell 

To charm her heart, but leave her fancy free ; 
To quicken converse, nofto quell ; 

He granted her to sigh, for so could he ; 
But when she wept, why should it be 1 
'T was irksome, for it stole away 
The joy of his love-holiday. 
Bred of such uncongenial mood 
At length would some dim doubt intrude 
If what he felt, so far below 
Her passion's pitch, were love or no. 
With that the common daylight's beam 
Broke in upon his morning dream. 
And as that common day advanced 
His heart was wholly unentranced. 

W^hat follow'd was not good to do. 

Nor is it good to tell ; 
The anguish of that worst adieu 
Which parts with love and honour too, 

Abides not, — so far well. 
The human heart can not sustain 
Prolong'd inalterable pain, 
And not till reason cease to reign 
Will nature want some moments brief 
Of other moods to mix with grief; 
Such and so hard to be destroy'd 
That vigour which alihors a void, 
And in the midst of all distress, 
Such nature's need for happiness ! 
And when she rallied thus, more high 
Her spirits ran, she knew not why. 
Than was their v^'ont in times than these 
Less troubled, with a heart at ease. 
So meet extremes ; so joy's rebound 
Is highest from the hollowest ground ; 
So vessels with the storm that strive 
Pitch higher as they deeplier dive. 

Well had it been if she had curb'd 
These transports of a mind disturb'd ; 



For grief is then the worst of foes 
When, all intolerant of repose. 
It sends the heart abroad to seek 
From weak recoils exemptions weak ; 
After false gods to go astiay. 
Deck altars vile with garlands gay, 
And place a painted form of stone 
On passion's abdicated throne. 

Till then her heart was as a mound, 
Or simple plot of garden ground 

Far in a forest wild. 
Where many a seedling had been sown, 
And many a bright-eyed floweret grown 

To please a favourite child. 
Delighted was the child to call 

The plot of garden-ground her own; 
Delighted was she at the fall 
Of evening mild when shadows tall 
Cross-barr'd the mound and cottage wall, 

To linger there alone. 
Nor seem'd the garden flowers less fair, 
Nor loved she less to linger there. 
When glisten'd in the morning dew 
Each lip of red and eye of blue ; 
And when the sun too brightly burn'd 
Towards the forest's verge she turn'd. 
Where stretch'd away from glade to glade 
A green interminable shade ; 
And in the skirts thereof a bower 
Was built with many a creeping flower, 
For shelter at the noontide hour ; 
And from the forest walks was heard 
The voice of many a singing bird. 
With murmurs uf the cushat-dove. 
That tell the secret of her love : 
And pleasant therefore all day long. 
From earliest dawn to even-song, — 
Supremely pleasant was this wild 
Sweet garden to the woodsman's child. — 
The whirlwind came with lire and flood 
And smote the garden in the wood ; 
All that was form'd to give delight 
Destruction levell'd in a night ; 
The morning broke, the child awoke. 
And when she saw what sudden stroke 
The garden which she loved had swept 
To ruin, she sat down and wept. 
Her grief was great, but it had vent ; 
Its force, not spared, was sooner spent ; 
And she bethought her to repair 
The garden which had been so fair. 
Then roam'd she through the forest walks, 
Cropping the wild flowers by their stalks, 
And divers full-blown blossoms gay 
She gather'd and in fair array 
Disposed, and stuck them in the mound 
Which had been once her garden ground. 
They seem'd to flourish for awhile, 
A moment's s])ace she seem'd to smile ; 
But brief the bloom, and vain the toil, 
They were not native to the soil. 

That other child, beneath whose zone 
Were passions fearfully full-grown, — 



J 



412 



HENRY TAYLOR. 



She too essay'd to deck fne waste 

Where love had grown, which love had graced 

With false adornments — flowers, not fruit — 

Fast-fading flowers, that strike not root, — 

With pleasures alien to her breast, 

That bloom but briefly at the best; 

Tlie world's sad substitutes for joys 

To minds tliat lose their equipoise. 

On Como's lake the evening star 

Is trembling as before ; 
An azure flood, a golden bar, 
There as they were before they are, 
But she that loved them — she is far, 

Far from her native shore. 
No more is seen her slender boat 
Upon the star-lit lake afloat, 
With oar or sail at large to rove, 
Or tether'd in its wooded cove 
Mid gentle waves that sport around, 
And rock it with a gurgling soCind. 
Keel up, it rots upon the strand. 
Its gunwale sunken in the sand. 
Where suns and tempests vvarp'd and shrank 
Each shatter'd rib and riven plank. 
Never again that land-wreck'd craft 
Shall feel the billow boom abaft ; 
Never, when springs the freshening gale. 
Take life again from oar or sail : 
Nor shall the freight that once it bore 
Again be seen on lake or shore. 

A foreign land is now her choice, 

A foreign sky above her, 
And unfamiliar is each voice 

Of those that say they Jove her. 
A prince's palace is her home. 
And marble floor and gilded dome. 
Where festive myriads nightly meet, 
Quick echoes of her steps repeat. 
And she is gay at time, and light 
From her makes many faces bright; 
And circling flatterers hem her in 
Assiduous each a word to win. 
And smooth as mirrors each the while 
Reflects and multiplies her smile. 
But fitful were her smiles, nor long 
She cast them to that courtly throng ; 
And should the sound of music fall 
Upon her ear in that high hall, 
The smile was gone, the eye that shone 
So brightly, would he dimm'd anon, 
And objectless would then appear 
As stretch'd to check the starting tear. 
The chords within responsive rung, 
For music spoke her native tongue. 

And then the gay and glittering crowd 
Is heard not, laugh they e'er so loud ; 
Nor then is seen the simpering row 
Of flatterers, bend they e'er so low ; 
For there before her when she stands. 
The mountains rise, the lake expands ; 
Around the terraced summit twines 
The leafy coronal of vines ; 
Within the watery mirror deep 
Nature's calm converse lies asleep ; 



Above she sees the sky's blue glow, 

The forest's varied green below, 

And far its vaulted vistas through 

A distant grove of darker hue. 

Where, mounting high from clumps of oak. 

Curls lightly up the thin gray smoke ; 

And o'er the boughs that over-bower 

The crag, a castle's turrets tower — 

An eastern casement mantled o'er 

With ivy flashes back the gleam 
Of sunrise — it was there of yore 
She sate to see that sunrise pour 
Its splendour round — she sees no more, 

For tears disperse the dream. 

Thus seized and speechless had she stood. 

Surveying mountain, lake, and wood. 

When to her car came that demand. 

Had she forgot her native land ? 

'Twas but a voice within repUed 

She had forgotten all beside. 

For words are weak and most to seek 

When wanted fifty-fold, 
And then if silence will not speak. 
Or trembling lip and changing cheeky 

There's nothing told. 
But could she have reveal'd to him 

Who question'd thus, the vision bright. 
That ere his words were said grew dim 

And vanish'd from her sight. 
Easy the answer were to know 

And plain to understand, — 

That mind and memory both must fail. 
And life itself must slacken sail. 
And thought its functions must forego, 
And fancy lose its latest glow, 

Or ere that land 
Could pictured be less bright and fair 
To her whose home and heart are there 
That land the loveliest that eye can see 
The stranger ne'er forgets, then how should she ? 



FROM PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE. 
REPOSE OF THE HEART. 

The heart of man, walk it which way it will, 
Sequester'd or frequented, smooth or rough, 
Down the deep valley amongst tinkling flocks. 
Or mid the clang of trumpets and the march 
Of clattering ordnance, still must have its halt. 
Its hour of truce, its instant of repose, 
Its inn of rest; and craving still must seek 
The food of its affections — still must slake 
Its constant thirst of what is fresh and pure, 
And pleasant to behold. 



APPROACH OF MORNING. 

The gibbous moon was in a wan decline, 
And all was silent as a sick man's chamber. 
Mixing its small beginnings with the dregs 
Of the pale moonshine and a few faint stars, 
The cold uncomfortable daylight dawn'd ; 
And the white tents, topping a low ground-fog, 
Show'd like a fleet becalm'd. 



HENRY TAYLOR. 



413 



ARTEVELDE'S LOVE FOR ADRIANA. 

To bring a cloud upon the summer clay 
Of one so happy and so beautiful, — 
It is a hard condition. For myself, 
I know not that the circumstance of life 
In all its changes can so far afflict me, 
As makes anticipation much worth while. 
But she is younger, — of a sex beside 
Whose spirits are to ours as flame to fire, 
More sudden and more perishable too ; 
So that the gust wherewith the one is kindled 
Extinguishes the other. Oh, she is fair! 
As fair as heaven to look upon ! as fair 
As ever vision of the virgin blest 
That weary pilgrim, resting at the fount 
Beneath tlie palm, and dreaming to the tune 
Of flowing waters, duped his soul withal. 
It was permitted in my pilgrimage, 
'i'o rest beside the fount beneath the tree, 
Beholding there no vision, but a maid 
Whose form was light and graceful as the palm, 
Whose heart was pure and jocund as the fount. 
And spread a freshness and a verdure round. 
This was permitted in my pilgrimage, 
And lotii I am to take my staff again. 
Say that I fall not in this enterprise — 
Still must my life be full of hazardous turns, 
And they that house with me must ever live 
In imminent peril of some evil fate. 
— Make fast the doors ; heap wood upon the fire ; 
Draw in your stools and pass the goblet round. 
And be the prattling voice of children heard. 
Now let us make good cheer — but what is this 1 
Do I not see, or do I dream I see 
A form that midmost in the circle sits 
Half visible, his face deform'd with scars, 
And foul with blood 1 — Oh yes, I know it — there 
Sits Danger with his feet upon the hearth. 
(Pauses for some time, and then resumes' in a livelier toiie.) 
Still for myself, I fear not but tiiat I, 
Taking what comes, leaving what leave I must, 
Could make a sturdy struggle through the world. 
But for the maid, the choice were better far 
To win her dear heart back again if lost. 
And stake it uoon some less dangerous cast. 



GREATNESS AND SUCCESS. 

He was one 
Of many thousand such that die betimes, 
Whose story is a fragment known to few. 
Then comes the man who has the luck to live, 
An<l he's a prodigy. Compute the chances. 
And deem there's ne'er one in dangerous times 
Who wins the race of glory, but than him 
A thousand men more gloriously cndow'd 
Have fallen upon the course ; a thousand others 
Hive had their fortunes foundcr'd by a chance, 
W liilst lighter barks push'd past them; to whom add 
A smaller tally, of the singular few. 
Who, gifted with predominating powers. 
Bear yet a temperate will and keep the peace. 
The world knows nothing of its greatest men. 



TWO CHARACTERS. 

Than Lord de Vaux there's no man sooner sees 
Whatever at a glance is visible; 
What is not, he can never see at all. 
Quick-witted is he, versatile, seizing points, 
But never solving questions: vain he is — 
It is his pride to see things on all sides, 
Which best to do he sets them on their corners. 
Present before him arguments by scores 
Bearing diversely on the atl'air in hand. 
He'll see them all successively, distinctly, 
Yet never two of them can see together ; 
Or gather, blend, and balance what he sees 
To make up one account; a mind it is 
Accessible to reason's subtlest rays. 
And many enter there, but none converge; 
It is an army with no general. 
An arch without a key -stone. Then the other, 
Good Martin Bloudel-Vatre — he is rich 
In nothing else but ditliculties and doubts. 
You shall be told the evil of your scheme. 
But not the scheme that's better. He forgets 
That policy, expecting not clear gain, 
Deals ever in alternatives. He's wise 
In negatives, is skilful at erasures, 
Expert in stepping backwards, an adept 
At auguring eclipses. But admit 
His apprehensions, and demand, what then ? 
And you shall find you've turn'd the blank leaf 
over. 



REPENTANCE w\NI) IMPROVEMENT. 

He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend. 

Eternity mourns that. 'Tis an ill cure 

For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them. 

Where sorrow's held intrusive and turn'd out. 

There wisdom will not enter, nor true power. 

Nor aught that dignifies humanity. 

Yet such the barrenness of busy life ! 

From shelf to shelf ambition clambers up. 

To reach the naked'st pinnacle of all. 

Whilst magnanimity, absolved from toil, 

Reposes self-included at the base. 



ARTEVELDE'S CHARACTER OF HIS WIFE. 

She was a creature framed by love divine 
For mortal love to muse a life away 
In pondering her perfections ; so unmoved 
Amidst the world's contentions, if they touch'd 
No vital chord nor troulileil what she loved. 
Philosophy might look her in the face. 
And like a hermit stooping to the well 
That yields him sweet refreshment, might therein 
See but his own serenity reflected 
With a more heavenly temlerncss of hue ! 
Yet whilst the world's ambitious empty cares. 
Its small disquietudes and insect stings, 
Disturb'd her never, she was one made up 
Of feminine aff"cctions, and her life 
Was one full stream of love from fount to sea. 
3m2 



414 



HENRY TAYLOR. 



fSOS 



ARTEVELDE'S VISION OF HIS WIFE, THE 
NIGHT BEFORE HIS DEATH. 

ToucHiNR this eye-creation ; 
What is it to surprise us?...!.. 
Man's grosser attributes can generate 
What is not, and has never been at all ; 
What should forbid his fancy to restore 
A being pass'd away ? The wonder lies 
In the mind merely of the wondering man. 
Treading the steps of common life with eyes 
Of curious inquisition, some will stare 
At each discovery of nature's ways, 
As it were new to find that God contrives. 
The contrary were marvellous to me, 
And till I find it I shall marvel not. 
Or all is wonderful, or nothing is. 
As for this creature of my eyes — .... 
It was the image of my wife ! . . . 

Dejected I had been before : that sight 
Inspired a deeper sadness, but no fear. 
Nor had it struck that sadness to my soul 
But for the dismal cheer the thing put on, 
And the unsightly points of circumstance 

That sullied its appearance and departure 

She appeared 
In white, as when I saw her last, laid out 
After her death ; suspended in the air 
She seem'd, and o'er her breast her arm.s were cross'd; 
Her feet were drawn together pointing downwards, 
And rigid was her form and motionless. 
From near her heart, as if the source were there, 
A stain of blood went wavering to her feet. 
So she remain'd inflexible as stone 
And I as fixedly regarded her. 
Then suddenly, and in a line oblique. 
Thy figure darted past her, whereupon, [moved, 
Though rigid still and straight, she downward 
And as she pierced the river with her feet 
Descending steadily, the streak of blood 
Peel'd ofTupon the water, which, as she vanish'd, 
Appear'd all blood, and swell'd and welter'd sore, 
And midmost in the eddy and the whirl 
My own face saw I, which was pale and calm 

As death could make it : then the vision pass'd, 

And I perceived the river and the bridge, 

The mottled sky and horizontal moon, 

The distant camp, and all things as they were. 



CHARACTER OF ARTEVEI.DR, BY THE DUKE OF 
BURGUNDY. 

— DrnT: rebel though he was, 
Yet with a noble nature and great gifts 
Was he endow'd : courage, discretion, wit, 
An equal temper and an ample soul, 
Rock-bound and fortified against assaults 
Of transitory passion, but below 
Built on a surging subterranean fire 
That stirr'd and lifted him to high attempts 
So prompt and capable, and yet so calm. 
He nothing lack'd in sovereignty but the right; 
Nothing in soldiership except good fortune. 
Wherefore with honour lay him in his grave, 
And thereby shall increase of honour come 
Unto their arms who vanish'd one so wise, 
So valiant, so renown'd ! 



FAMINE IN A BEi^IEGED CITY. 

I p.\iD a visit first to Ukenheim, 
The man who whilom saved our father's life. 
When certain Clementists and ribald folk 
Assail'd him at Malines. He came last night, 
And said he knew not if we owed him aught, 
But if we did, a peck of oatmeal now 
Would pay the debt, and save more lives than one. 
I went. It seem'd a wealthy man's abode ; 
The costly drapery and good house-gear 
Had, in an ordinary time, betoken'd 
That with the occu|>ant the world went well. 
By a low couch, curtain'd with cloth of frieze, 
Sat Ukenheim, a famine-stricken man, 
With either bony fist upon his knees, 
And his long back upright. His eyes were fix'd, 
And moved not, though some gentle words I spake : 
Until a little urchin of a child 
That call'd him father, crept to where he sat 
And pluck'd him by the sleeve, and with its small 
And skinny finger pointed : then he rose, 
And with a low obeisance, and a smile 
That look'd like watery moonlight on his face, 
So weak and pale a smile, he bade me welcome. 
I told him that a lading of wheat flour 
Was on its way, whereat, to my surprise. 
His countenance fell, and he had almost wept.... 

He pluck'd aside the curtain of the couch, 
And there two children's bodies lay composed. 
They seem'd like twins of some ten years of age, 
And they had died so nearly both together 
He scarce could say which first: and being dead, 
He put them, for some fancil'ul alTection, 
Each with its arm about the other's neck. 
So that a fairer sight I had not seen . 
Than those two children, with their little faces 
So thin and wan, .so calm, and sad, and sweet. 
I look'd upon them long, and for awhile 
I wish'd myself their sister, and to lie 
With them in death, as they did with each other: 
I thought that there was nothing in the world 
I could have loved so much ; and then I wept ; 
And when he saw I wept, his own tears fell. 
And he was sorely shaken and convulsed, 
Through weakness of his frame and his great grief. 
. . . He thank'd me much for what I said was sent; 
But I knew well his thanks were for my tears. 
He look'd again upon the children's couch, 
And said, low down, they wanted nothing now. 
So, to turn oft' his eyes, 
I drew the small survivor of the three 
Before him, and he snatch'd it up, and soon 
Seem'd quite forgetful and absorb'd. With that 

I stole away. 

♦ 

FROM EDWIN THE FAIR. 

THE VOICE OF THE WIND. 

The wind, when first he rose and went abroad 
Through the vast region, felt himself at fault, 
Wanting a voice ; and suddenly to earth 
Descended with a wafture and a swoop. 
Where, wandering volatile from kind to kind, 
He wooed the several trees to give him one. 
First he besought the ash ; the voice she lent 



HENRY TAYLOR. 



415 



Fitfully with a free and lashing change 
Flung here and there its sad uncertainties: 
The aspen next; a fluttered frivolous twitter 
Was her sole tribute : from the willow came, 
So long as dainty summer dress'd her out, 
A whispering sweetness, hut her winter note 
Was hissing, dry, and reedy : lastly the pine 
Did he solicit, and from her he drew 
A voice so constant, soft, and lowly deep, 
That tliere he rested, welcoming in her 
A mild memorial of the ocean cave 
Where he was born. 

DUNSTAN'S ACCOUNT OF HIS TEMPTATIONS. 

I BUT denounce 
Loves on a throne, and pleasures out of place. 
I am not old ; not twenty years have fled 
Since I was young as thou ; and in my youth 
I was not by those pleasures unapproach'd 
Which youth converses with 

When Satan first 
Attempted me, 'twas in a woman's shape ; 
Such shape as m.\y have erst misled mankind, 
When Greece or Rome uprear'd with Pagan rites 
Temples to Venus, pictured there or carved 
With rounded, polish'd, and exuberant grace, 
And mien whose dimpled changefulness betray'd, 
Through jocund hues, the seriousness of passion. 
I was attempted thus, and Satan sang 
With female pipe and melodies that thrill'd 
The soften'd soul, of mild voluptuous ease 
And tender sports that chased the kindling hours 
In odorous gardens or on terraces, 
To music of the fountains and the birds, 
Or else in skirting groves by sunshine smitten, 
Or warm winds kiss'd, whilst we from shine to shade 
Roved unregarded. Yes, 'twas Satan sang. 
Because 'twas sung to me, whom God had call'd 
To other pastime and severer joys. 
But were it not for this, God's strict behest 
Enjoin'd upon me, — had I not been vow'd 
To holiest service rigorously required, 
I should have own'd it for an angel's voice, 
Nor ever could an earthly crown, or toys 
And childishness of vain ambition, gauds 
And tinsels of the world, have lured my heart 
Into the tangle of those mortal cares 
That gather round a throne. What call is thine 
From God or man ! What voice within bids thee 
Such pleasures to forego, such cares confront ? 



CALMNESS AND RETROSPECTION. 

A SACRED and judicial calmness holds 
Its mirror to my soul ; at once disclosed, 
The picture of the past presents itself 
Minute yet vivid, such as it is seen 
In his last moments by a drowning man. 
Look at this skeleton of a once green leaf: 
Time and the elements conspired its fall ; 
The worm hath eaten out the tenderer parts, 
And left this curious anatomy 
Distinct of structure — made so by decay. 
So, at this moment, lies my life before me, — 
In all its intricacies, all its errors — 
And can I be unjust 1 



A SOLILOQUY OF LEOLF. 

Here again I stand, 
Again and on the solitary shore 
Old ocean plays as on an instrument, 
Making that ancient music, when not known ? 
That ancient music, only not so old 
As He who parted ocean from dry land, 
And saw that it was good. Upon mine ear. 
As in the season of susceptive youth, 
The mellow murmur falls — but finds the sense 
DuU'd by distemper; shall I say — by time] 
Enough in action has my life been spent 
Through tlic past decade, to rebate the edge 
Of early sensibility. The sun 
Rides high, and on the thoroughfares of life 
I find myself a man in middle age, 
Busy and hard to please. The sun shall sooi 
Dip westerly, — but oh ! how little like 
Are life's two twilights ! Would the last were first. 
And the first last ! that so we might be soothed 
Upon the thoroughfares of busy life 
Beneath the noonday sun, with hope of joy 
Fresh as the morn, — witli hope of breaking lights, 
Illuminated mists and spangled lawns. 
And woodland orisons and unfolding flowers, 
As things in expectation. Weak of faith ! 
Is not the course of earthly outlook, thus 
Reversed from Hope, an argument to Hope — 
That she was licensed to the heart of man 
For other than for earthly contemplations. 
In that observatory domiciled 
For survey of the stars 1 



. A SCHOLAR. 

This life, and all that it contains, to him 
Is but a tissue of illuminous dreams 
Fill'd with book-wisdom, pictured thought and love 
That on its own creations spends itself. 
All things he understands, and nothing does. 
Profusely eloquent in copious praise 
Of action, he will talk to you as one 
Whose wisdom lay in dealings and transactions ; 
Yet so much action as might tie his shoe 
Cannot his will command ; himself alone 
By his own wisdom not a jot the gainer. 
Of silence, and the hundred thousand things 
'Tis better not to mention, he will speak. 
And still most wisely. 



DUNSTAN ON THE DEATH OF HIS MOTHER. 

Why did I quit the cloister ? I have fought 
The battles of Jehovah ; I have braved 
The perfidies of courts, the wrath of kings. 
Desertion, treachery, — and I murmur'd not, — 
The fall from puissance, the shame of flight, 
The secret knife, the public proclamation, — 
And how am I rewarded 1 God had raised 
New enemies against me, — from without 
The furious Northman, — from within, far worse, 
Heart-sickness and a subjugating grief. 
She was my friend — I had but her — no more, 
No other upon earth — and as for heaven, 
I am as they that seek a sign, to whom 
No sign is given. My mother ! Oh, my mother ! 



T. K. HERVEY. 



Thomas K. Hervey was born near Paisley, 
in Scotland, and received his early education 
in Manchester. I believe he has since re- 
sided most of the time in London, where his 
attention has been principally devoted to lite- 
rature. He is the author of The Poetical 
Sketch Book, The Book of Christmas, The 
Devil's Progress, Illustrations of Modern 



Sculpture, Australia, The English Helicon, 
and numerous contributions to the annuals 
and literary magazines. Some of his pieces 
are very pleasing and harmonious. The best 
of them are "poems of the affections," de- 
scriptive of domestic incidents and feelings, 
upon which he writes with taste, simplicity, 
and tenderness. 



LOVE. 

He stood beside a cottage lone, 

And listen'd to a lute, 
One summer eve, when the breeze was gone, 

And the nightingale was mute. 
The moon was watching on the hill, 
The stream was staid, and the maples still, 

To hear a lover's suit, 
That — half a vow, and half a prayer — 
Spoke less of hope than of despair; 
And rose into the calm, soft air, 

As sweet and low 

As he had heard — 0, wo ! O, wo ! — 

The flutes of angels, long ago ! 
" By every hope that earthward clings, 
By faith that mounts on angcl-wings. 
By dreams that make night-shadows bright, 
And truths that turn our day to night, 
By childhood's smile, and manhood's tear, 
By pleasure's day, and sorrow's year, 
By all the strains that fancy sings, 
And pangs that time so surely brings, — 
For joy or grief, for hope or fear, 
For all hereafter as for here, 
In peace or strife, in storm or shine, 
My soul is wedded unto thine !" 

And for its soft and sole reply, 
A murmur, and a sweet, low sigh, 

But not a spoken word; 
And yet they made the waters start 

Into his eyes who heard. 
For they told of a most loving heart. 

In a voice like that of a bird ; — 
Of a heart that loved, though it loved in vain ; 
A grieving, and yet not a pain, — 
A love that took an early root. 

And had an early doom, 
Like trees that never grow to fruit. 

And early shed their bloom, — 
Of vanish'd hopes and happy smiles. 

All lost for evermore ; 
Like ships, that sail'd for sunny isles, 

But never came to shore ' 
416 



CLEOPATRA EMBARKING ON THE 
CYDNUS. 

Flutes in the sunny air. 

And harps in the porphyry halls I 
And a low, deep hum, like a people's prayer, 

With its heart-breathed swells and falls ! 
And an echo, like the desert's call, 

Flung back to the shouting shores ! 
And the river's ripple, heard through all, 

As it plays with the silver oars ! — 
The sky is a gleam of gold. 

And the amber breezes float, 
Like thoughts to be dream'd of, but never told. 

Around the dancing boat ! 
She has stepp'd on the burning sand — 

And the thousand tongues are mute. 
And the Syrian strikes, with a trembling hand. 

The strings of his gilded lute ! 
And the Ethiop's heart tlu-obs loud and high, 

Beneath his white symar, 
And the Lybian kneels, as he meets her eye, 

Like the flash of an Eastern star ! 
The gales may not he heard, 

Yet the silken streamers quiver. 
And the vessel shoots, like a bright-plumed bu'd. 

Away, down the golden river ! 
Away by the lofty mount, 

And away by the lonely shore. 
And away by the gushing of many a fomit, 

Where fountains gush no more ! — 
Oh ! for some warning vision there, 

Some voice that should have spoken 
Of climes to be laid waste and bare, 

And glad young spirits broken ! 
Of waters dried away. 

And hope and beauty blasted ! 
— That scenes so fair and hearts so gay 

Should he so early wasted ! 
A dream of other days — 

That land is a desert now. 
And grief grew up, to dim the blaze 

Upon that royal brow ! 
The whirHvind's burning wing hath cast 

Blight on the marble plain. 



T. K. HERVEY. 



417 



And sorrow, like the simoom, past 

O'er Cleopatra's bi-ain. 
Too like her fervid clime, that bred 

Its self-consuming fires, 
Her breast, like Indian widows, fed 

Its own funereal pyres. 
— Not such the song her minstrels sing — 

" Live, beauteous, and for ever !" 
As the vessel darts, with its purple wing, 

Away — down the golden river ! 



THE GROTTO OF EGERIA. 

A RUSH of waters! — faint, and sweet, and wild, 

Like the far echo of the voice of years, — 
The ancient nature, singing to her child 

Tile self-same hymn that luU'd the infant spheres! 
A spell of song not louder than a sigh. 

Yet speaking like a trumpet to the heart. 
And thoughts that lift tliemselves, triumphingly, 

O'er time — where time has triumph'd over art, — 
As wild-flowers climb its ruins, — haunt it still ; 

While, still, above the consecrated spot. 
Lifts up its prophet voice the ancient rill. 

And flings its oracles along the grot. 
But, where is she, the lady of the stream. 

And he whose worship was, and is — a dream 1 

Silent, yet full of voices! — desolate, 

Yet fiU'd with memories, like a broken heart ! 
Oh I for a vision like to his who sate 

With thee, and with the moon and stars, apart. 
By the cool fountain, many a livelong even. 

That speaks, unheeded, to the desert, now, 
When vanish'd clouds had left the air all heaven. 

And all was silent, save the stream and thou, 
Egeria ! — solemn thought upon his brows, 

For all his diadem ; thy spirit-eyes 
His only homage ; and the flitting boughs 

And birds, alone, between him and the skies! 
Each outwaid sense expanded to a soul, 

And every feeling tuned into a truth ; 
And all the bosom's shatter'd strings made whole. 

And all itsworn-outpowersretouch'd with youth. 
Beneath thy spell, that chasten'd while it eharm'd, 

Thy words, that touch'd the spirit while they 
taught, 
Thy look, that utter'd wisdom while it warm'd. 

And moulded fancy in the stamp of thought, 
And breathed an atmosphere below, above, 
Light to the soul, and to the senses love ! 

Beautiful dreams ! that haunt the younger earth, 

In poet's pencil or in minstrol's song. 
Like sighs, or rainbows, dying in their birth. 

Perceived a moment, and rcmember'd long ! 
But, no ! — bright visions ! — fables of the heart ! 

Not to the past, alone, do ye belong ; 
Types for all ages, — wove when early art 

To feeling gave a voice — to truth a tongue ! 
Oh ! what if gods have left the Grecian mount, 

And shrines are voiceless on tiie classic shore, 
And long Egeria by the gushing fount 

Waits for her monarch-lover never more, — 
53 



Who hath not his Egeria ? — some sweet thought, 

Shrouded and shrined within his heart of hearts, 
More closely cherish'd, and more fondly sought, 

Still, as the daylight of the soul departs; 
The vision 'd lady of the spring, that wells 

In the green valley of his brighter years. 
Or gentle spirit that for ever dwells. 

And sings of hope, beside the fount of tears. 

In the heart's trance — the calenture of mind 

That haunts the soul-sick mariner of life. 
And paints the fields that he has left behind. 

Like green morganas, on the tempest's strife ; 
In the dim hour when memory — whose song 

Is still of buried hope — sings back the dead. 
And perish'd looks and forms — a phantom-throng, — 

With melancholy eyes and soundless tread. 
Like lost Eurydiccs, from graves, retrack 

The long-deserted chambers of the brain, 
Until the yearning soul looks fondly back. 

To clasp them, and they vanish, once again ; 
At even, — when the fight of youth is done, 

And sorrow — like the "searchers of the slain," — 
Turns up the cold, dead faces, one by one. 

Of prostrate joys and wishes, — but in vain ! 
And finds that all is lost, — and walks around, 
Mid hopes that, each, has perish'd of its wound ; 

Then, pale Egeria ! to thy moon-lit cave 
The madden'd and the mourner may retire, 

To cool the spirit's fever in thy wave. 
And gather inspiration from thy lyre ; 

In solemn musings, when the world is still. 
To woo a love less fleeting to the breast. 

Or lie and dream, beside the prophet-rill 
That resteth never, while it whispers rest ; 

Like Numa, cast earth's cares and crowns aside, 

And commune with a spiritual bride ! 



THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER OLYMPIUS, 
AT ATHENS. 

Thou art not silent ! — oracles are thine 
Which the wind utters, and the spirit hears. 
Lingering, mid ruin'd fane and broken shrine. 
O'er many a tale and trace of other years ! 
Bright as an ark, o'er all the flood of tears 
That wraps thy cradle-land — thine earthly love, 
Where hours of hope, mid centuries of fears. 
Have gleam'd, like lightnings through the gloom 
above, [Jove ! 

Stands, roofless to the sky, thy home, Olympian 

Thy column'd aisles with whispers of the past 
Are vocal, — and, along th'ine ivied walls. 
While Elian echoes murmur on the blast, 
And wild-flowers hang, like victor-coronals, 
In vain the turban'd tyrant rears his halls, 
And plants the symbol of his faith and slaughters; 
Now, even now, the beam of promise falls 
Bright upon Hellas, as hcrov\'n bright daughters, 
And a Greek Ararat is rising o'er the waters ! 

Thou art not silent ! when the southern fair — 
Ionia's moon — looks down upon thy breast, 



418 



T. K. HERVEY. 



Smiling, as pity smiles above despair, 
Soft as young beauty soothing age to rest, — 
Sings the night-spirit in thy weedy crest, 
And she, the minstrel of the moonlight hours 
Breathes — like some lone one, sighing to be blest — 
Her lay, half hope, half sorrow, from the tlowers. 
And hoots the prophet owl, amid his tangled bowers! 

And, round thine altar's mouldering stones are born 
Mysterious harpings, — wild as ever crept 
From him who waked Aurora, every morn, 
And sad as those he sung her, till she slept ! 
A thousand and a thousand years have swept 
O'er thee, who wert a moral from thy spring, 
A wreck in youth ! nor vainly hast thou kept 
Thy lyre: Olympia's soul is on the wing. 
And a new Iphitus has waked, beneath its string ! 



SLUMBER LIE SOFT ON THY BEAUTI- 
FUL EYE! 

SiuMBEK lie soft on thy beautiful eye ! 
Spirits, whose smiles are — like thine — of the sky. 
Play thee to sleep, with their visionless strings, 
Brighter than thou, but because they have wings ! 
Fair as a being of heavenly birth, 
But loving and loved like a child of the earth ! 

Why is that tear 1 — art thou gone, in thy dream, 
To the valley far-off, and the moon-lighted stream, 
Where the sighing of flowers and the nightingale's 

song 
Fling sweets on the wave, as it wanders along ! — 
Blest be the dream that restores them to thee, 
But thou art the bird and the roses to me ! 

And now, as I watch o'er thy slumbers, alone, 
And hear thy soft breathing, and know thee mine 

own. 
And muse on the wishes that grew in that vale. 
And the fancies we shaped from the river's low tale, 
I blame not the fate which has taken the rest. 
Since it left, to my bosom, its dearest and best ! 

Slumber lie soft on thy beautiful eye ! 

Love be a rainbow, to brighten thy sky ! 

Oh ! not for sunshine and hope, would I part 

With the shade time has flung over all — but thy 

heart ! 
Still art thou all which thou wert, when a cliild 
Only more holy — and only less wild ! 



TO MYRA. 

I LEAVE thee now, my spirit's love ! 

All bright in youth's unclouded light ; 
With sunshine round, and hope above. 

Thou scarce hast learnt to dream of night. 
Yet night will come ! — thy bounding heart 

Must watch its idols melt away ; 
And, oh ! thy soul must learn to part 

With much that made thy childhood gay ! 
But should we meet in darker years. 

When clouds have gather'd round thy brow, 
How far more precious in thy tears, 

Than in thy glow of gladness, now ! — 



Then come to me, — thy wounded heart 

Shall find it has a haven still. 
One bosom — faithless as thou art, — 

All — all thine own, mid good and ill I 

Thou leavcst me for the vi^orld ! then go ! 

Thou art too young to feel it yet. 
But time may teach thy heart to know 

The worth of those who ne'er forget. 

And, should that world look dark and cold, 
Then turn to him whose silent truth 

Will still love on, when worn and old, 
The form it loved so well in youth ! 

Like that young bird that left its nest, 
Lured, by the warm and sunny sky. 

From flower to flower, but found no rest, 
And sought its native vale to die ; — 

Go ! leave my soul to pine alone ; 

But, should the hopes that woo thee, wither, 
Return, my own beloved one ! 

And let — oh, let us die together ! 



STANZAS TO A LADY. 



The rose that deck'd thy cheek is dead, 
The ruby from thy lip has fled. 

Thy brow has lost its gladness ; 
And the pure smiles that used to play 
So brightly there, have pass'd away 

Before the touch of sadness! — 
Yet sorrow's shadows o'er thy face 
Have wander'd with a mellowing grace. 

And grief has given to thine eye 
A beauty, such as yonder sky 

Receives, when daylight's splendour 
Fades in the holy twilight hour, 
Whose magic hangs on every flower 

A bloom more pure and tender ; 
When angels walk the quiet even, 
On messages of love from heaven ! 

Thy low sweet voice, in every word. 
Breathes — like soft music far-off heard — 

The soul .of melancholy ! 
And oh ! to listen to thy sigh ! 
The evening gale that v^-anders by 

The rose is not so holy ! 
But none may know the thoughts that rest 
In the deep silence of thy breast ! 

For oh ! thou art, to mortal eyes, 
Like some pure spirit of the skies, 

Awhile to bless us given ; 
And sadly pining for the day, 
To spread thy wings, and flee away. 

Back to thy native heaven ! 
Thou wert beloved by all before, 
But now, — a thing that we adore ! 



T. K. HERVEY. 



419 



HOPE. 

Again — again she comes! — methinks I hear 

Her wild, sweet singing, and her rushing wing's; 
My heart goes forth to meet her with a tear, 

And welcome sends from all its broken strings. 
It was not thus — not thus — we met of yore, 

When my plumed soul went half-way to the sky 
To greet her; and the joyous song she bore 

Was scarce more tuneful than the glad reply : 
The wings are fettcr'd by the weight of years, 
And grief has spoil'd the music with her tears. 

She comes — ^I know her by her starry eyes, 

I know her by the rainbow in her hair ! 
Her vesture of the light and summer skies — 

But gone the girdle which she used to wear 
Of summer roses, and the sandal flowers 

That hung enamour'd round her fairy feet, 
When, in her youth, she haunted earthly bowers, 

And cuU'd from all the beautiful and sweet. 
No more she mocks me with her voice of mirth, 
Nor offers now the garlands of the earth. 

Come back, come back — thou hast been absent long. 

Oh ! welcome back the sybil of the soul. 
Who came, and comes again, with pleading strong. 

To offer to the heart her mystic scroll ; 
Though every year she wears a sadder look, 

And sings a sadder song, and every year 
Some further leaves are torn out from her book. 

And fewer what she brings, and far more dear. 
As once she came — oh, might she come again. 
With all the perish'd volumes offer'd then. 

But come — thy coming is a gladness yet — 

Light from the present o'er the future cast, 
That makes the present bright — but oh — regret 

Is present sorrow while it mourns the past ; 
And memory speaks, as speaks the curfew bell, 

To tell the daylight of the heart is gone. 
Come, like the seer of old, and with thy spell. 

Put back the shadow of that setting sun 
On my soul's dial; and with new-born light 
Hush the wild tolling of the voice of night. 

Bright spirit, come — the mystic roll is thine. 

That shows the hidden fountains of the breast, 
And turns, with point unerring, to divine 

The places where its buried treasures rest 
Its hoards of thought and feeling ; at that spell, 

Methinks I feel its long-lost wealth reveal'd, 
And ancient springs within my bosom swell 

That grief had check'd, and ruin had conceal'd. 
And sweetly swelling where its waters stray, 
The tints and freshness of its earlier day. 

She comes — she comes — her voice is in mine ear. 

Her mild, sweet voice, that sings, and sings for ever, 
AVhose strains of song sweet thoughts awake to hear. 

Like flowers that haunt the margin of a river; 
(Flowers, like lovers, only speak in sighs, [hearts,) 

Whose thoughts are hues, whose voices are their 
Uh — thus the spirit yearns to pierce the skies. 

Exulting throbs, though all save hope departs: 
Thus the glad freshness of our sinless years 
Is water'd ever by the heart's rich tears. 



She comes — I know her by her radiant eyes, 

Before whose smile the long dim cloud departs; 
And if a darker shade he on her brow. 

And if her tones he sadder than of yore, 
And if she sings more solemn music now. 

And bears another harp than erst she bore. 
And if around her form no longer glow 

The earthly flowers that in her youth she wore — 
That look is loftier, and that song more sweet, 
And heaven's flowers — the stars — are at her feet. 



HOMES AND GRAVES. 

How beautiful a world were ours, 

But for the palo and shadowy One 
That treadeth on its pleasant flowers, 

And stalketh in its sun ! 
Glad childhood needs the lore of time 

To show the phantom overhead ; 
But where the breast, before its prime, 

That carrieth not its dead — 
The moon that looketh on whose home 
In all its circuit sees no tomb 1 

It was an ancient tyrant's thought, 

To link the living with the dead ; 
Some secret of his soul had taught 

That lesson dark and dread ; 
And, oh ! we bear about us still 

The dreary moral of his art — 
Some form that lieth, pale and chill, 

Upon each living heart. 
Tied to the memory, till a wave 
Shall lay them in one common grave ! 

To boyhood hope — to manhood fears ! 

Alas ! alas ! that each bright home 
Should be a nursing-place of tears, 

A cradle for the tomb ! 
If childhood seeth all things loved 

Where home's unshadowy shadows wave. 
The old man's treasure hath removed — 

He looketh to the grave ! — 
For grave and home lie sadly blent, 
Wherever spreads yon firmament. 

A few short years — and then, the boy 

Shall miss, beside the household hearth, 
Some treasure from his store of joy. 

To find it not on earth ; 
A shade within its sadden'd walls 

Shall sit, in some beloved's room, 
And one dear name, he vainly calls, 

Be written on a tomb — 
And he have learnt, from all beneath. 
His first, dread, bitter taste of death ! 

And years glide on, till manhood's come; 

And where the young, glad faces were, 
Perchance the once bright, happy home 

Hath many a vacant chair: 
A darkness, from the churchyard shed. 

Hath fall'n on each familiar room, 



420 



T. K. HERVEY. 



And much of all home's light hath fled 

To smoulder in the tomb — 
And household gifts that memory saves 
But help to count the household graves. 

Then, homes and graves the heart divide, 

As they divide the outer world ; 
But drearier days must yet betide. 

Ere sorrow's wings be furl'd ; 
When more within the churchyard Ue 

Than sit and sadly smile at home. 
Till home, unto the old man's eye, 

It.self appears a tomb ; 
And his tired spirit asks the grave 
For all the home it longs to have '. 

It shall be so — it shall be so ! 

Go bravely trusting — trusting on ; 
Bear up a few short years — and, lo ! 

The grave and home are one ! — 
And then, the bright ones gone before 

Within another, happier home. 
And waiting, fonder than before, 

Until the old man come — 
A home where but the life-trees wave ; 
Like childhood's — it hath not a grave ! 



A VISION OF THE STARS. 

FoH ever gone ! the world is growing old ! 

Gone the bright visions of its untaught youth ! 
The age of fancy was the age of gold, 

And sorrow holds the lamp that lights to trutli ! 
And wifjdom writes her records on a page 

Whence many a pleasant tale is swept away — 
The wild, sweet fables of the dreaming age. 

The gorgeous stories of the classic day. 
The world is roused from glad and glowing dreams. 

Though roused by light awaking still is pain. 
And oh ! could men renew their broken themes. 

Then, would the world at times might sleep again. 
Oh for the plains — the bright and haunted plains — 

Where genius wander'd, when the earth was new, 
Led by the sound of more than mortal strains. 

And gathering flowers of many a vanish'd hue ! 
The deathless forms that on the lonely hill 

Came sweetly gliding to the lonely breast. 
Or spoke, in spirit wliispcrs, from the rill 

That lull'd the watcher to his mystic rest ! 
The shapes that met his steps by green and glade. 

Or glanced through mid-air, on their gleaming 

wings ; [play'd ; 

That hover'd where the young, wild fountains 

And hung in raiubows o'er the dancing springs. 
Or drew aside the curtains of the sky, 
And show'd their starry mansions to his eye ! 
Oh ! the bright tracks by truth from error won ! 

The price we pay for knowledge, and in vain ! 
For half the beauty of the world is gone, 

Since science built o'er fancy's wild domain ! 

A dream of beauty ! such as came, of old. 

To him who came and v/atch'd the hosts of light. 

As one by one their fiery chariots roU'd, 
In golden pomp along the vaults of night, 



Till another, and another deep 

Sent forth a spirit to the shining train. 
Their myriad motion rock'd his heart to sleep, 

But left bright pictures in the haunted brain. 
Where forms grevv up, and took the starry eyes 
That gleamed upon him from the crowded skies ! 
A dream like his to whom the boon was given 

To read the story of the stars, at will. 
And, by the lights they held for him in heaven, 

Talk with their lady on the Latmos hill ! 
A vision of the stars ! the moon, to-night — 

Her antler'd coursers by the nymph-train driven, 
Rides in the chariot of her own sweet light. 

To hunt the shadows through the fields of heaven ! 
And oh ! the hunting-grounds of yonder sky, 

M'^hose streams are rainbows, and whose flowers 
are stars ! — 
The shapes of light that, as they wander by, 

Do spirit homage from their golden cars ! 
The meteor troop that, as she passes, play 

Their fiery gambols in their lady's sight ; 
And planet-forms that, on her crowded way. 

Throw silver incense from their urns of light ! 
Lo ! Perseus, from his everlasting height. 

Looks out to see the huntress and her train ; 
And Love's own planet, in the pale, soft light. 

Looks young, as when she rose from out the main! 
And, plying all the night, his starry wings, 
• Up to her throne, the herald of the sky 
From many an earthly home and hill-top, brings 

The mortal offering of a young heart's sigh ! 
And round her chariot sail immortal forms, 

Or darkly hang about its shining rim ; 
And, far away, the scared and hunted storms 

Leap from their presence, to their caverns dim ! 
On — onward, at her own wild fancy led. 

Along the cloud-land paths she holds her flight, 
Where rears the battle-star his crested head. 

And bears his burning falchion through the night! 
Where, hand in hand, the brothers of the sky 

Sit, like twin angels, or pure heavenward sleep ; 
While far below, with urns that never dry, 

The mourning Hyads hang their heads and weep! 
Where brightly dwell in all their early smiles. 

Ere one was lost — the sweet and sister seven, 
Like blessed spirits, pausing from their toils. 

Or some fair family at rest, in heaven. 
Where, swifter than her steeds, that never tire — 

Some comet-shape — those couriers of the sky — 
In breathless haste, upon his barb of fire, 

On some immortal message, rushes by ! 
O'er the dim heights where, encircled by his train. 

And wearing on his brow his sparkling crown. 
The planet-monarch holds his ancient reign ; 

And, from his palace of the clouds, looks down. 
With stately presence and a smiling eye 
On his bright people of the boundless sky ! 
Mid northern lights, like fiery flags unfurl'd, 
And soft, sweet gales that never reach the vi'orld ; 
Mid flaming signs, that perish in their birth. 
And ancient orb, that have no name on earth ; 
Hail'd by the songs of everlasting choirs. 
And welcomed from a thousand burning lyres ! 
Oh ! for the ancient dreamer's prophet eye, 
To see the hunting grounds of yonder sky ; 



T. K. HERVEY. 



421 



To hang upon some planet's wheeling car, 
And tread the cloud-land paths from star to star ; 
And climb the heights where old Endymion 
Held lofty converse with the lady-moon ; 
Or, lifted to her chariot of the sky, 
Look on its dwellers with a lofty eye, [driven, 

And throughout its fields, in that bright vision 
Walk, for one night, amid the hosts of heaven. 



THE CONVICT SHIP. 

MoRX on the waters ! — and, purple and bright. 
Bursts on the billows the flushing of light! 
O'er the glad waves, like a child of the sun, 
See the tall vessel goes gallantly on ; 
Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail, [gale ! 
And her pennant streams onward, like hope, in the 
The winds come around her, in murmur and song, 
And the surges rejoice, as they bear her along ! 
Upward she points to the golden-edged clouds. 
And the sailor sings gayly, aloft in the shrouds! 
Onward she glides, amid ripple and spray, 
Over the waters — away, and away ! 
Bright as the visions of youth, ere they part, 
Passing away, like a dream of the heart ! — 
Who — as the beautiful pageant sweeps by. 
Music around her, and sunshine on high, — 
Pauses to think, amid glitter_and glow. 
Oh ! there be hearts that are breaking, below ! 

Night on the waves I — and the moon is on high, 
Hung, like a gem, on the brow of the sky ; 
Treading its depths, in the power of her might, 
And turning the clouds, as they pass her, to light ! 
Jjook to the waters ! — asleep on their breast, 
Seems not the ship like an island of rest 1 
Bright and alone on the shadowy main, 
Like a heart-cherish'd home on some desolate plain! 
Who — as she smiles in the silvery light. 
Spreading her wings on the bosom of night. 
Alone on the deep, — as the moon in the sky, — 
A phantom of beauty ! — could deem, with a sigh. 
That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin. 
And souls that are smitten lie bursting, within ! 
Who — as he watches her silently gliding, — 
Remembers that wave after wave is dividing 
Bosoms that sorrow and guilt could not sever, 
Hearts that are parted and broken for ever ! 
Or deems that he watches, afloat on the wave. 
The death-bed of hope, or the young spirit's grave ! 

'T is thus with our life, while it passes along, 
Like a vessel at sea, amid sunshine and song ! 
Gayly we glide, in the glaze of the world, 
With streamers afloat, and with canvass unfurl'd ; 
All gladness and glory to wandering eyes. 
Yet charter'd by sorrow, and freighted with sighs ! — 
Fading and false is the aspect it wears, 
As the smiles we put on — just to cover our tears ; 
And the withering thoughts which the world can- 
not know, 
Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below ; 
M'hile the vessel drives on to that desolate shore 
Where the dreams of our childhood are vanish'd 
and o'er ! 



I AM ALL ALONE. 

I AM all alone ! and the visions that play 
Round life's young days, have pass'd away; 
And the songs are hush'd that gladness sings ; 
And the hopes that I cherish'd have made them 

wings ; 
And the light of my heart is dimm'd and gone, 
And I sit in my sorrow, — and all alone ! 

And the forms which I fondly loved are flown, 
And friends have departed — one by one ; 
And memory sits, whole lonely hours. 
And weaves her wreath of hope's faded flowers. 
And weeps o'er the chaplet, when no one is near 
To gaze on her grief, or to chide her tear ! 

And the home of my childhood is distant far. 
And I walk in a land where strangers are ; [hear 
And the looks that I meet and the sounds that I 
Are not light to my spirit, nor song to my ear ; 
And sunshine is round me, which I cannot see. 
And eyes that beam kindness, but not for me ! 

And the song goes round, and the glowing smile. 

But I am desolate all the while ! 

And faces are bright and bosoms glad, 

And nothing, I think, but my heart, is said ! 

And I seem like a blight in a region of bloom. 

While I dwell in my own little circle of gloom! 

I wander about, like a shadow of pain, [brain ; 
With a worm in my breast, and a spell on my 
And I list, with a start, to the gushing of gladness, — 
Oh ! how it grates on a bosom all sadness ! — 
So, I turn from a world where I never was known. 
To sit in my sorrow, — and all alone ! 



TO MARY. 

The eye must be dark that so long has been dim. 

Ere again it may gaze upon thine ; 
But my heart has revealings of thee and thy home. 

In many a token and sign : 
I need but look up with a vow to the sky. 

And a light like thy beauty is there ; 
And I hear a low murmur like thine in reply. 

When I pour out my spirit in prayer. 

And though, like a mourner that sits by a tomb, 

I am wrapp'd in the mantle of care. 
Yet the grief of my bosom — oh, call it not gloom! — 

Is not the dark grief of despair. 
By sorrow reveal'd, as the stars are by night, 

Far off" a bright vision appears ; 
A hope — like the rainbow — a being of light, 

Is born, like the rainbow, in tears. 

I know thou art gone to the home of thy rest ; 

Then why should my soul be so sad ? 
I know thou art gone where the weary are blest, 

And the mourner looks up and is glad ; — 
Where love has put off, in the land of its birth. 

The stain it had gathcr'd in this, 
And hope, the sweet singer that gladden'd the earth, 

Lies asleep on the bosom of bliss. 
2N 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



American readers have as yet seen but few 
of the productions of this lady, but she has 
already made herself a home in the hearts of 
the people ; a proof that the popular taste 
does not lie altogether in the direction of sing- 
song echoes, sickly sentiment, or empty blank 
verse ; and a proof, too, in her own case, that 
the most varied acquirements of learning do 
not impair the subtlest delicacy of thought 
and feeling. 

Miss Barrett, in her earlier works and first 
adventurous attempts, is the poetess of angels 
and seraphim, breathing a rare and elevated 
atmosphere, too rare for habitual contempla- 
tion. In her later style, she is the sweet poet- 
ess of meditation and thought, of a deep and 
pure spirituality, of 

Philosophy, baptized 
In th3 pure fountain of eternal love. 

Compare the eloquence of her poem entitled 
" Cowper's Grave," with what generally 
passes for Byronic eloquence, and mark the 
difference. Here is thought compact and 
close, enthusiasm fresh from the heart, noble 
domestic incident, and sorrow as gentle and as 
mild as ever breathed from a human bosom. 
Mark the pathos, the tenderness, the deep 
sympathy in the poem, " The Sleep." 

Miss Barrett's prodactions are unique in 
this age of lady authors. They have the 
"touch of nature," in common with the best; 
they have, too, sentiment, passion, and fancy 
in the highest degree, without any imitation 
of Norton, Hemans, or Landon. Her ex- 
cellence is her own; her mind is coloured 
by what it feeds on ; the fine tissue of her 
flowing style comes to us from the loom of 
Grecian thought. She is the learned poetess 
of the day, familiar with Homer and ^Eschy- 
Lus and SornocLES ; and to the musings of 
Tempe she has added the inspiration of Chris- 
tianity, " above all Greek, all Roman fame." 
She has translated the Prometheus, to the 
delight of scholars, and has contributed a 
series of very valuable prose papers " On the 
Poetry of the Early Church," to the London 
"Athenseum." Her reading Greek recalls to 
us Roger Ascham's anecdote of Lady Jane 

422 



Grey ; but Lady Jane Grey has left us no 
such verses. 

A striking characteristic of Miss Barrett's 
verse, is its prevailing seriousness, approach- 
ing to solemnity — a garb borrowed from the 
" sceptred pall" of her favourite Greek drama 
of fate. She loses much with the general 
reader, by a dim mysticism ; but many of 
her later poems are entijely free from any such 
defect. The great writers whom she loves 
will teach her the plain, simple, universal 
language of poetry. 

Her dreams and abstractions, though " ca- 
viare to the generale," have their admirers, 
who will ever find in pure and elevated phi- 
losophy, expressed in the words of enthusiasm, 
the living presence of poetry. On Parnassus 
there are many groves : far from the dust of 
the highway, embosomed in twilight woods, 
that seem to symbol Reverence and Faith 
trusting on the unseen, we may hear, in the 
whispering of the trees, the wavering breath 
of insect life, the accompaniment of our poet's 
strain. Despise not dreams and reveries. 
With Cowley, Miss Barrett vindicates her- 
self. The father of poets tells us, even 
dreams, too, are from God." 

Miss Barrett has published two volumes 
of poetry, " Prometheus Bound, and Miscel- 
laneous Poems," in 1833, and " The Seraphim 
and other Poems," in 1838; and we understand 
that she has a forthcoming volume in the 
press. It will be a welcome one to all lovers 
of true poetry. 

In our judgment. Miss Barrett is destined, 
in due time, to take her place at the head of 
the female poets of Great Britain. The noble 
ardour with which she writes, makes us 
believe that this new volume will go far 
toward determining the question. 

Of her personal history, we know very lit- 
tle. She resides in London, and is one of the 
stars in a brilliant constellation of scholars, 
philosophers, and poets. She was a contribu- 
tor, with Wordsworth, Hunt, and Horne, to 
" Chaucer Modernized," and besides her prose 
writings in "The Athenseum," has written for 
that admirable gazette some of her finest poems. 



ELIZABETH 


B. BARRETT. 423 




And timid hares were drawn from woods 


COWPER'S GRAVE. 


To share his home-caresses, 




Ui)lookiiig to his human eyes, 


I will invite thee, from thy envious herse 


With sylvan tendernesses. 


To rise, and 'bout the world thy beams lo spread, 




That we may see there 's brightnesse in the dead. 


But while in blindness he remain'd, 


Habinoton. 


Unconscious of the guiding. 




And things provided came without 


It is a place where poets crown'd 
May feel the heart's decaying — 

It is a place where happy saints 
May weep amid their praying — 

Yet let the grief and himihlencss 


The sweet sense of providing. 


He testified this solemn truth. 
Though frenzy desolated. — 


Nor man nor nature satisfy 
Whom only God created ! 


As low as silence languish ; 


Like a sick child, that knoweth not 


Earth surely now may give her calm 


His mother while she blesses. 


To whom she gave her anguish. 


And droppeth on his burning brow 


1 


The coolness of her kisses ; 


poets ! from a maniac's tongue 
Was pourVl the deathless singing ! 


That turns his fever'd eyes around — 
" My mother ! where 's my mother V — 


[ Christians ! at your cross of hope 


As if such tender words and looks 


A hopeless hand was clinging ! 


Could come from any other ! — 


men, this man in brotherhood, 


i Your weary paths beguiling. 


The fever gone, with leaps of heart 


Groan'd inly while he taught you peace, 


He sees her bending o'er him ; 


And died while ye were smiling ! 


Her face all pale from watchful love. 


_ 


Th' unweary love she bore him — 


j And now, what time ye all may read 


Thus, woke the poet from the dream 


1 Through dimming tears his story 


His life's long fever gave him. 


' How discord on the music fell. 


Beneath those deep pathetic eyes 


1 And darkness on the glory — 


Which closed in death to save him ! 


And how, when, one by one, sweet sounds 




And wandering lights departed, 


Thus ! oh, not thus ! no type of earth 


He wore no less a loving face, 


Could image that awaking. 


Because so broken-hearted. 


M'^herein he scarcely heard the chant 




Of seraphs round him breaking — 


He shall be strong to sanctify 


Or felt the new immortal throb 


The poet's high vocation, 


Of soul from body parted ; 


And bow the meekest Christian down 


But felt those, eyes alone, and knew 


In meeker adoration : 


''My Saviour ! not deserted 1" 


Nor ever shall he be in praise 




By wise or good forsaken ; 


Deserted ! who hath dreamt that when 


Named softly, as the household name 


The cross in darkness rested. 


Of one whom God hath taken ! 


Upon the Victim's hidden face 




No love was manifested 1 


With sadness that is calm, not glooin. 


What frantic hands outstretched have e'er 


I learn to think upon him ; 


Th' atoning drops averted — 


With meekness that is gratefulness, 


What tears have washed them from the soul — 


On God, whose heaven hath won him — 


That one should be deserted ] 


Who suffer'd once the madness-cloud 




Towards His love to blind him ; 


Deserted ! God could separate 


But gently led the blind along. 


From His own essence rather: 


Where breath and bird could find him ; 


And Adam's sins have swept between 




The righteous Son and Father — 


And wrought within his shatter'd brain 


Yea ! once, Immanuel's orphan'd cry 


Such quick poetic senses, 


His universe hath shaken — 


j As hills have language for, and stars 


It went tip single, echoless. 


Harmonious inHuences! 


" My God, I am forsaken !" 


The pulse of dew upon the grass 




His own did calmly number; 


It went up from the Holy's Hps 


And silent shadow from the trees 


Amid his lost creation. 


Fell o'er him like a slumber. 


That of the lost, no son should use 




Those words of desolation ; 


The very world, by God's constraint. 


That earth's worst fren/ies, marring hope, 


From falsehood's chill removing, 


Shoidd mar not hope's fruition : 


Its women and its men became 


And I, on Cowper's grave, should see 


Beside him true and loving! — 


His rapture, in a vision ! i 

1 li 



424 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



NAPOLEON'S RETURN. 

Napoleon ! years ago, and that great word, 
Compact of human breath in hate and dread 
And exultation, skied us overhead — 
An atmosphere, whose hghtning was the sword, 
Scathing the cedars of the world, drawn down 
In burnings, by the metal of a crown. 

Napoleon ! Foemen, while they cursed that name, 
Shook at their own curse ; and while others bore 
Its sound, as of a trumpet, on before, 
Brass-fronted legions foUow'd, sure of fame — 
And dying men, from trampled battle-sods. 
Near their last silence, utter'd it for God's. 

Napoleon ! Sages with high foreheads droop'd, 
Did use it for a problem ; children small 
Leapt up as hearing in 't their manhood's call : 
Priests bless'd it from their altars, overstoop'd 
By meek-eyed Christs, — and widows with a moan 
Breathed it, when question'd why they sate alone. 

And this name brake the silence of the snows 
In Alpine keeping, holy and cloud-hid ! 
The mimic eagles dared what nature's did, 
And over-rush'd her mountainous repose 
In search of eyries : and th' Egyptian river 
Mingled the same word with its grand " for ever." 

Yea! this, they shouted near the pyramidal 
Egyptian toml)s, whose mummied habitants, 
Pack'd to humanity's significance, 
Motion'd them back with stillness ! Shouts as idle 
As the hired artists' work — in myrrh and spice, 
Swathing last glories round the Ptolemies. 

The world's face changed to hear it. Kingly men 
Came down, in chidden babes' bewilderment, 
From autocratic places- — each content 
With sprinkled ashes for anointing ! — then 
The people laugh'd, or wonder'd for the nonce. 
To see one throne a composite of thrones. 

Napoleon ! The cavernous vastitude 

Of India felt, in motions of the air. 

The name which scatter'd in a ruining blare 

All Europe's landmarks, drawn afresh in blood ! 

Napoleon ! from the Russias, west to Spain ! 

And Austria trembled — till we heard her chain. 

And Germany was 'ware — and Italy 
Forgot her own name so — her inurel-lock'd, 
High-ghosted Csesars passing uninvoked, — 
She crumbled her own ruins vs'ith her knee, 
To serve a newer ! But theGaulmen cast 
A future from them, nobler than her past. 

For, verily, though Gaul auci^ustly rose 
With that raised name, and did assume by such 
The purple of the world, none gave so much 
As she, in purchase — to speak I'l lin. in loss — 
Whose hands to freedom strctch'd, dropp'd para- 
lyzed 
To wield a sword, or fit an undersized 



King's crown to a great man's head ! And though 

along 
Her Paris streets, did float on frequent streams 
Of triumph, pictured or enmarbled dreams, 
Dreamt right by genius in a world gone wrong, 
No dream of all, was beautiful to see, 
As the lo8t vision of her liberty. 

Napoleon I 'twas a high name lifted high ! 

It met at last God's thunder, — sent to clear 

Our compassing and covering atmosphere. 

And open a clear sight, beyond the sky, 

Of supreme empire ! This of earth's was done — 

And kings crept out again to feel the sun. 

The kings crept out — the people sate at home, — 

And finding the long-advocated peace 

A pall em!)roider'd with worn images 

Of rights divine, too scant to cover doom, — 

Gnawed their own hearts, or else the corn that grew 

Rankly, to bitter bread, on Waterloo ! 

A deep gloom center'd in the deep repose — 
The nations stood up mute to count their dead — 
The bearer of the name which vibrated 
Through silence, — trusting to his noblest foes, 
When earth was all too gray for chivalry- 
Died of their mercies, midst the desert sea. 

O wild St. Helen I very still she kept him. 
With a green willow for all pyramid, 

Stirring a little if the low wind did 

More rarely, if some pilgrim oveijwept him 
And parted the lithe boughs, to see the clay 
Which seem'd to cover his for judgment-day. 

Nay ! not so long ! France kept her old aflection. 

As deeply as the sepulchre the corse, — 

And now, dilated by that love's remorse 

To a new ansrel of the resurrection. 

She cries, ■' Behold, thou England, I would have 

The dead thou wottest of, from out that grave." 

And England answers in the courtesy 
Which, ancient foes turn'd lovers, may befit — , 
'' Take back thy dead ! and when thou buriest it, 
Throw in all former strifes 'twixt thee and me." 
Amen, mine England ! 'tis a courteous claim — 
But ask a little room too ... for thy shame! 

Because it was not well, it was not well. 
Nor tuneful with thy lofty -chanted part 
Among the Oceanides, that heart 
To bind and bare, and vex with vulture fell. 
O mine own England ! would, we had to seek 
All crimson stains upon thy breast — not cheek ! 

Would hostile fleets had scarr'd thy bay of Tor, 
Instead of the lone ship, which waited here 
Until thy princely purpose should he clear. 
Then left a gfiadmr — to pass out no more ! 
Not for the moonHGjht — not for a noontide sun ! 
Green watching hills, ye witness'd what was done ! 

But since it tva.i done. — in sepulchral dust, 
We fain would pay back somcthins: of our debt 
To Gaul, if not to honour, and fnrfret 
How, through much fear, we llilsified the trust 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



425 



Of a fall'n foe and exile ! We return 
Orestes to Electra ... in his urn ! 

A little urn — a little dust inside, 

Which once outbalanced the large earth, — albeit 

To-day, a four years child might carry it, 

Sleek-brow'd, and smiling " Let the burden 'bide !" 

Orestes to Electra ! O fair town 

Of Paris, how the wild tears will run down, 

And run back in the chariot-marks of time, 
When all the people shall come forth to meet 
The passive victor, death-still in the street 
He rode through mid the shouting and bell-chime 
And martial music, — under eagles which 
Dyed their ensanguined beaks at Austerlitz ! 

Napoleon ! he hath come again — borne home 
Upon the popular ebbing heart, — a sea 
Which gathers its own wrecks perpetually, 
Majestically moaning. Give him room ! 
Room for the dead in Paris ! Welcome solemn 
And grave-deep, 'ncath the cannon-moulded co- 
lumn ! 

There, weapon spent and warrior spent may rest 

From roar of fields ! provided Jupiter 

Dare trust Saturnus to lie down so near 

His bolts ! And this he may do, since possess'd 

(To wave th' imperial phantom from the throne) 

Of that one capable sword . . . Napoleon's own ! 

Napoleon ! Once more the recover'd name 
Shakes the old casements of the world ! and we 
Look out upon the passing pageantry. 
Attesting that the dead makes good his claim 
To a Gaul grave, — another kingdom won — 
The last — of few spans — by Napoleon ! 

Blood fell like dew beneath his sunrise — sooth ! 
But also glitter'd dew-like in the slanted 
High-rayed light. He was a tyrant — granted ! 
But th' Autos of his autocratic mouth 
Said " Yea" i' the people's French ! He multiplied 
The image of the freedom he denied. 

And if they ask'd for " rights," he made reply, 
" Ye have my glory !" and so, drawing round them 
His ample purple, glorified and bound them 
In an embrace that seem'd identity. 
He ruled them like a tyrant — true ! but none 
Were ruled like slaves ! Each felt Napoleon ! 

I do not praise this man — the man was flaw'd. 
For Adam — much more, Christ ! — his knee, un- 
bent — 
His hand, unclean — his aspiration, pent [had 

Within a sword-sweep Pshaw ! — But since he 

The genlu.i to be lover/, why let him have 
The justice to be honour'd in his grave. 

I think a nation's tears, pour'd thus together. 
More rare than shouts ! I think this funeral [all. 
More grand than crownings, though a Pope bless 
I think this grave more strong than thrones ! But 

whether 
The crown'd Napoleon or his senseless dust 
Be worth more, I discern not — angels must. 
54 



THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. 

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers ! 

Ere the sorrow comes with years ? mothers. 
They are leaning their young heads against their 

And that cannot stop their tears. 
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, 

The young birds are chirping in the nest, 
The young fawns are playing in the shadows. 

The young flowers are blowing from the west ; 
But the young, young children, O my brothers ! 

They are weeping bitterly ! 
They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 

In the country of the free. 

Do you question the young children in their sorrow, 

Why their tears are falling so ? 
The old man may weep for his to-morrow 

Which is lost in long ago. 
The old tree is leafless in the forest. 

The old year is ending in the frost ; 
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest. 

The old hope is hardest to be lost ! 
But the young, young children, O my brothers ! 

Do you ask them why they stand 
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, 

In our happy fatherland ! 

They look up with their pale and sunken faces, 

And their looks are sad to see ; 
For the man's grief untimely draws and presses 

Down the cheeks of infancy. 
" Your old earth," they say, " is very dreary ;" 

" Our young feet," they say, " are very weak! 
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary — 

Our grave-rest is very far to seek ! 
Ask the old why they weep, and not the children. 

For the outside earth is cold, ['ri'ig> 

And we young ones stand without, in our bevvild- 

And the graves are for the old." 

"True," say the young children, "it may happen 

That we die before our time ! 
Little Alice died last year,-: — the grave is shapen 

Like a snow-ball, in the rime. 
We look'd into the pit prepared to take her. 

Was no room for any icork in the close clay .' 
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, 

Crying — ' Get up, little Alice, it is day !' 
If you listen by that grave in sun and shower, 

With your ear down, little Alice never cries; 
Could we see her face, be sure we should not 
know her, [eyes. 

For the new smile ivhi'ch has proton within her 
For merry go her moments, lull'd and still'd in 

The shroud, by the kirk chime I 
It is good when it happens," say the children, 

" That we die before our time !" 

Alas, the young children ! they are seeking 

Death in life, as best to have ! [i"?> 

They are binding up their hearts away from break- 
With a cerement from the grave. 

Go out, children, from the mine and from the city, 
Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do ! 

Pluck your handfuls of the meadow cowslips pretty, 
3v2 



426 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



Laugh aloud to feel your fingers let them through! 
Butthe children say, " Are cowslips of the meadows 

Like the weeds anear the mine'.'* 
Leave us quiet in the dark, of our coal shadows 

From your pleasures fair and fine. 

" For oh !" say the children, " we are weary, 

And we cannot run or leap : 
If we cared for any meadows, it ivere merely 

To drop down In theia and sleep. 
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping. 

We fall on our feee trying to go ; 
And underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, 

The reddest flowers wo'ild look as pale as snow ; 
For all day, we drag our burden tiring, 

Through the coal-dark underground, 
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iror 

III the factories round and round. 

" All day long the wheels are droning, turning, 
Their wind comes in our faces ! [burning. 

Till our hearts turn, and our heads with pulses 
And the walls turn in their places ! [i'lai 

Turns the sky in the high window blank and reel- 
Turns the long light that droopeth down the wall. 

Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling, 
Are all turning all the day, and we with all ! 

All day long, the iron wheels are droning, 
And sometimes we could pray, 

' O ye wheels (breaking olfiu a mad moaning,) 
Stop ! be silent for to-day !' " 

Ay, be silent ! let them hear each other breathing. 
For a moment, mouth to mouth ; [wreathing 

Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh 
Of their tender human youth ; 

Let them feel that this cold metallic motion 
Is not all the life God giveth them to feel ; 

Let them prove their inward souls against the notion 
That they live in you, or under you, wheels ! 

Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, 

As if fate in each were stark ! [ward. 

And the children's souls, which God is calling sun- 
Spin on blindly in the dark. 

Now tell the weary children, O my brothers ! 

That they look to Him and pray. 
For the bless'd One who blesseth all the others, 

To bless them another day. [us," 

They answer — " Who is God that He should hear 

While this rushing of the iron wheels is stirr'd ! 
When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us 

Pass unhearing — at least, answer not a word ; 
And we hear not(for the wheels in their resounding) 

Strangers speaking at the door. 
Is it likely God with angels singing round Him, 

Hears our weeping any more 1 

Two words, indeed, of praying we remember ; 

And at midnight's hour of harm, 
" Our Father /" looking upward in our chamber, 

We say softly for a charm.-j- 

* A commissioner mentions the f:ict of weeds being thus 
confounded with the idea of flowers. 

+ The renort of the coiniiiissioners present repeated in- 
stances of children, whose reliffious devotion is confined 
to the repetition of the two first words of the Lord's 
Prayer. 



We say no other words except " Our Father /" 

And we think that, in some pause of angels' song, 
He may pluck them with the silence sweet to 
gather, 

And hold both in His righthand, which is strong. 
Our Father.' If He heard us. He would surely — 

For they call Him good and mild — 
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, 

" Come and rest with me, my child." 

" But no," say the children, weeping faster, 

" He is silent as a stone ; 
And they tell us, of His image is the master 

Who commands us to work on." 
" Go to !" say the children ;' "up in Heaven, 

Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find ! 
Do not mock us ! we are atheists in our grieving, 

We look to him — but tears have made us blind, .'" 
Do you hear children weeping and disproving, 

O my brothers, wiiatye teach 1 
For God's possible is taught by His world's loving. 

And the children doubt of each ! 

And well may the children weep before ye, 

They are weary ere they run .' 
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory 

Which is brighter than the sun ! 
They know the grief of men, but not the wisdom, 

They sink in their despair, with hope at calm, 
Are slaves without liberty in Cbristdom, 

Are martyrs by the pang without the palm ! 
Are worn as if with age; yet unretrievingly 

No joy of memory keep. 
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly, 

Let them weep, let them weep ! 

They look up, with theii' pale and sunken faces, 

And their look is dread to see; 
For you think you see their angels in their places, 

With eyes meant for Deity. 
" How long;' they say, "how long, O cruel nation! 

Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's 
heart ! 
Trample down with mailed heel its palpitation. 

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart 1 
Our blood si)lashes upward, O our tyrants 1 

And your purple shows your path," 
But the child's fob cursefh deeper in the silence 

Than the strong man in his wrath ! 



SERAPH AND POET. 

The spra])h sings before the manifest 

God-one, and in the burning of the Seven ; 

And with the full life of consummate heaven 
Heaving beneath him, like a mother's breast. 
Warm with her first-born's slumber in that nest : 

The poet sings upon the earth, grave-riven. 

Before the naughty world, soon self-forgiven 
For wronging him. and in the darkness prest 

From his own soul by worldly weights. Even so, 
Sing, seraph, with the glory ! Heaven is high ! 

Sing, poet, with the sorrow ! Earth is low ! 
The universe's inward voices cry 

"Amen" to either voice of joy and wo. 
Sing, poet, seraph — sing on equally. 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



427 



THE LAY OF THE ROSE. 

" discordance that can accord ; 

And accordance to discord." 

The Romaunt of the Rose. 

A ROSE once passed within 

A garden April-green, 
In her loneness, in her lonencss, 
And the fairer for that oneness. 

A white rose, dehcate, 

On a tail bough and straight, — 

Early comer, April comer, 

Never waiting for the summer ; 

Whose pretty gates did win 

South winds to let her in. 
In her loneness, in her loneness, 
All the fairer for that oneness. 

" For if I wait," said she, 

" Till times for roses be, — 
For the musk rose, and the moss rose. 
Royal red and maiden blush rose, — 

" What glory then for me, 

In such a company ? 
Roses plenty, roses plenty. 
And one nightingale for twenty ! 

" Nay, let me in," said she, 

" Before the rest are free. 
In my loneness, in my loneness, 
All the fairer for that oneness. 

" For I would lonely stand. 

Uplifting my white hand, 
On a mission, on a mission. 
To declare the coming vision. 

" See mine, a holy heart, 

To high ends set apart, — 
All immated, all unmated, 
Because so consecrated. 

" Upon which lifted sign. 

What worship will be mine ! 
What addressing, what caressing, 
What thanks and praise and blessing ! 

" A wind-like joy will rush 

Through every tree and bush, 
Bending softly in affection, 
And spontaneous benediction. 

"Insects, that only may 

Live in a sunbright ray. 
To my whiteness, to my whiteness 
Shall be drawn, as to a brightness. 

" And every moth and bee 

Shall near me reverently. 
Wheeling round me, wheeling o'er me 
Coronals of motion'd glory. 

" I ween the very skies 

Will look down in surprise. 
When low on earth they sec me, 
With my cloudy aspect dreamy. 



" Ten nightingales shall flee 
Their woods, for love of me, — 
Singing sadly all the suntide, 
Never waiting for the moontide ! 

" Three larks shall leave a cloud, 
To my whiter beauty vow'd, — 
Singing gladly all the moontide. 
Never waiting for the suntide." 

So praying did she win 
South winds to let her in. 
In her loneness, in her loneness. 
And the fairer for that oneness. 

But out, alas for her ! 

No thing did minister 
To her praises, to her praises, 
More than might unto a daisy's. 

No tree nor bush was seen 

To boast a perfect green, 
Scarcely having, scarcely having 
One leaf broad enow for waving. 

The little flies did crawl 

Along the southern wall. 
Faintly shifting, faintly shifting 
Wings scarce strong enow for lifting. 

The nightingale did please 

To loiter beyond seas. 
Guess him in the happy islands, 
Learning music from the silence. 

The lark, too high or low, 

Did haply miss her so — 
With his nest down in the gorses. 
And his song in the star-courses ! 

Only the bee, forsooth. 
Came in the place of both — 
Doing honour, doing honour 
To the honey-dews upon her. 

The skies looked coldly down 

As on a royal crown'; 
Then, drop by drop, at leisure, 
Began to rain for pleasure ; 

Whereat the earth did seem 

To waken from a dream ; 
Winter frozen, winter frozen. 
Her unquiet eyes unclosing — 

Said to the rose, " Ha, Snow ! 

And art thou fallen so 1 
Thou who wert enthroned stately 
Along my mountains lately ! 

" Holla, thou world-wide snow ! 

And art thou wasted so 1 
With a little bough to catch thee. 
And a little bee to watch thee !" 

Poor rose, to be unknown ! 

Would she had ne'er been blown, 
In her loneness, in her loneness, 
All the sadder for that oneness. 



428 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



Some word she tried to say, 

Some sigh — ah, wellaway ! 
But the passion did o'ercome her, 
And the fair frail leaves dropp'd from her — 

Dropp'd from her, fair and mute, 

Close to a poet's foot. 
Who beheld them, smiling lowly 
As at something sad yet holy : 

Said, "Verily and thus 

So chanceth eke with us, 
Poets, singing sweetest snatches. 
While deaf men keep the watches — 

"Vaunting to come before 

Our own age evermore. 
In a loneness, in a loneness, 
And the nobler for that oneness ! 

" But if alone we be. 

Where is our empiry 1 
And if none can reach our stature. 
Who will mate our lofty nature 1 

" What bell will yield a tone, 

Saving in the air alone ] 
If no brazen clapper bringing, 
Who can bear the chimed ringing ] 

" What angel but would seem 

To sensual eyes glint-dim 1 
And without assimilation. 
Vain is interpenetration ! 

" Alas ! what can we do, 

The rose and poet too. 
Who both antedate our mission 
In an unprepared season ! 

" Drop, leaf — be silent, song — 
Cold things we came among ! 
We must warm them, we must warm them, 
Ere we ever hope to charm them. 

" Howbeit," — here his face 

Lightened around the place, 
So to mark the outward turning 
Of his spirit's inward burning — 

" Something it is to hold 

In God's worlds manifold. 
First reveal'd to creatures' duty, 
A new form of His mild beauty ; 

" Whether that form respect 

The sense or intellect. 
Holy rest in soul or pleasance. 
The chief Beauty's sign of presence. 

" Holy in me and thee. 

Rose fallen from the tree, 
Though the world stand dumb around us. 
All unable to expound us. 

" Though none us deign to bless, 

Blessed are we nathless ; 
Blessed age and consecrated. 
In that. Rose, we were created ! 

" Oh, shame to poets' lays, 
Sung for the dole of praise — 

Hoarsely sung upon the highway. 

With an ' oholum da mihi /' 



" Shame, shame to poet's soul, 

Pining for such a dole. 
When heaven-called to inherit 
The high throne of his own spirit ! 

" Sit still upon your thrones, 

O ye poetic ones ! 
And if, sooth, the world decry you. 
Why, let that same world pass by you ! 

" Ye to yourselves suffice, 

Without its flatteries; 
Self-contentedly approve you 
Unto Him who sits above you, 

"In prayers that upward mount, 

Like to a sunned fount, 
And, in gushing back upon you. 
Bring the music they have won you ! 

" In thanks for all the good 

By poets understood — 
For the sound of seraphs moving 
Through the hidden depths of loving; 

" For sights of things away. 
Through fissures of the clay, — 

Promised things, which shall be given 

And sung over up in heaven ! 

" For life, so lonely vain, — 
For death, which breaks the chain, — 
For this sense of present sweetness. 
And this yearning to completeness !" 



MY DOVES. 
O Weisheit ! Du red'st wie eine Taube ! Goethe. 

My little doves have left a nest 

Upon an Indian tree. 
Whose leaves fantastic take their rest 

Or motion from the sea : 
For ever there, the sea-winds go 
With sunlit paces, to and fro. 

The tropic flowers look'd up to it. 
The tropic stars look'd down : 

And there my little doves did sit, 
With feathers softly brown. 

And glittering eyes, that show'd their right 

To general nature's deep delight. 

And God them taught, at every close 

Of water far, and wind. 
And lifted leaf, to interpose 

Their chanting voices kind ; 
Interpreting that love must be 
The meaning of the earth and sea. 

Fit rninisters ! Of living loves, 
Their's hath the calmest sound — 

Their living voice the likest moves 
To lifeless noises round — 

In such sweet monotone as clings 

To music of insensate things ! 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



429 



Mv little doves were ta'en away 
fVom that glad nest of theirs, 

Across an ocean foaming aye, 
And tempest-clouded airs. 

My little doves ! — who lately knew 

The sky and wave, by warmth and blue ! 

And now, within the city prison. 

In mist and chillness pent, 
With sudden upward look they listen 

For sounds of past content — 
For lapse of water, swell of breeze, 
Or nut-fruit falling from the trees. 

The stir without the glow of passion — 

The triumph of the mart — 
The gold and silver's dreary clashing 

With man's metallic heart — 
The wheeled pomp, the pauper tread — 
These only sounds are heard, instead. 

Yet still, as on my human hand 
Their fearless heads they lean, 

And almost seem to understand 
What human musings mean — 

(With such a plaintive gaze their eyne 

Are fasten'd upwardly to mine !) 

Their chant is soft as in the nest, 

Beneath the sunny sky : 
For love, that stirr'd it in their breast, 

Remains undyiiigly, 
And, 'neath the city's shade, can keep 
The well of music clear and deep. 

And love, that keeps the music, fills 

With pastoral memories : 
All cchoings from out the hills, 

All droppings from the skies, 
All flowings from the wave and wind, 
Remember'd in their chant I find. 

So teach ye me the wisest part, 

My little doves ! to move 
Along the city ways, with heart 

Assured by holy love, 
And vocal with such songs as own 
A fountain to the world unknown. 

'Twas hard to sing I>y Babel's stream — 
More hard in Babel's street! 

But if the soulless creatures deem 
Their music not unmeet 

For sunless walls — let 7(.9 begin, 

Who wear immortal wings, within ! 

To me, fair memories belong 
Of scenes that erst did bless ; 

For no regret — but present song, 
And lasting thankfulness — 

And very soon to break away, 

Like types, in purer things than they ! 

I will have hopes that cannot fade, 
For flowers the valley yields — 

I will have humble thoughts, instead 
Of silent, dewy fields ! 

My spirit and my G»d shall be 

My seaward hill, ray boundless sea ! 



ROM AUNT OF MARGRET. 

I PLANT a tree whose leaf 

The cypress leaf will suit; 
And when its shade is o'er you laid. 

Turn ye, and pluck the fruit ! 
Now, reach mine harp from off the wall, 

Where shines the sun aslant : 
The sun may shine and we be cold — 
Oh ! hearken, loving hearts and bold, 

Unto my wild romaunt, 

Margret, Margret I 

Sitteth the fair ladye 
Close to the river side, 
Which runneth on with a merry tone. 
Her merry thoughts to guide. 
It runneth through the trees. 
It runneth by the hill ; — 
Nathless, the ladye's thoughts have found 
A way more pleasant still. — 

Margret, Margret! 

The night is in her hair. 
And giveth shade to shade; 
And the pale moonlighton her forehead white, 
Like a spirit's hand, is laid : — 
Her lips part with a smile, 
Instead of speaking done — 
I ween she thinketh of a voice, 
Albeit uttering none ! 

Margret, Margret ! 

All little birds do sit 

With heads beneath their wings- 
Nature doth seem in a mystic dream. 
Apart from her living things. 
That dream by that ladye 
I ween is unpartook ; 
For she looketh to the high cold stars. 
With a tender human look ! 

Margret, Margret ! 

The ladye's shadow lies 
Upon the running river, — 
It lieth no less, in its quietness, 

For that which resteth never ; 
Most like a trusting heart 
Upon a passing faith, — 
Or as, upon the course of life. 

The steadfast doom of death ! 

Margret, Margret ! 

The ladye doth not move — 
The ladye doth not dream — 
Yet she secth her shade no longer laid 
In rest upon the stream ! 
It shaketh without wind — 
It parteth from the tide — 
It statideth upright, in the cleft moonlight — 
It sitteth at her .side ! 

Margret, Margret ! 

Look in its face, ladyo, 

And keep thee from thy swound ! 
With a spirit bold thy pulses hold. 
And hear its voice's sound ! 



! 430 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



For so will sound thy voice, 

When thy face is to the wall, — 
And such will be thy face, ladye, 

When the maidens work thy pall — 
Margret, Margret ! 

" Am I not like to thee 1" — 
The voice was calm and low — 
And between each word there seemed heard 
The universe's flow ! — 
" The like may sway the like ! 
By which mysterious law, 
Mine eyes from thine, my lips from thine, 
The light and breath may draw, 

Margret, Margret ! 

" My lips do need thy breath. 
My lips do need thy smile, — 
And my pale deep eyne, that light in thine 
Which met the stars erewhile. — 
Yet go, with light and life 
If that thou lovest one, 
In all the earth, who loveth thee 
More truly than the sun, 

Margret, Margret !" 

Her cheek had waxed white 
As cloud at fall of snow ; 
Then, like to one at set of sun, 
It waxed red also ! — 
For love's name maketh bold. 
As if the loved were near : 
And sighed she the deep long sigh 
Which Cometh after fear. 

Margret, Margret ! 

" Now, sooth, I fear thee not — 
Shall never fear thee now !" 
(And a noble sight was the sudden light 
Which lit her lifted brow !) 
" Can earth be dry of streams, 
Or hearts of love 1" — she said ; 
" Who doubteth love, can know not love, — 
He is already dead !" 

Margret, Margret ! 

" I have" — and here her lips 
Some word in pause did keep; 
And gave, the while, a quiet smile, 
As if they paused in sleep ! 
" I have — a brother dear, 
A knight of knightly fame; 
I broider'd him a knightly scarf 
With letters of my name." 

Margret, Margret ! 

" I fed his gray goss-hawk, 
I kissed his fierce bloodhound, 
I sate at home when he might come, 
And caught his horn's far sound : 
I sang him songs of eld, 
I pour'd him the red wine. 
He looked from the cup, and said, 
I love thee, sister mine .'" 

Margret, Margret ! 

IT trembled on the grass, 

With a low, shadowy laughter ! 



The sounding river, which rolled ever, 
Stood dumb and stagnant, after. — 
" Brave knight thy lirother is ! 
But better loveth he 
Thy poured wine than chanted song, — 
And better both, than thee, 

Margret, Margret !" 

The ladye did not heed 
The river's silence ; while 
Her own thoughts still ran at their will, 
And calm was still her smile. — 
" My little sister wears 

The look our mother wore ; 
I smooth her locks with a golden comb — 
I bless her evermore !" 

Margret, Margret ! 

"I gave her my first bird. 

When first my voice it knew — 
I made her share my posies rare, 
And told her where they grew. 
I taught her God's dear name — 
God's worthy praise to tell : — 
She look'd from heaven into my face, 
And said, I luve thee well .'" 

Margret, Margret ! 

IT trembled on the grass. 

With a low, shadowy laughter — 
You could see each bird, as it woke, and starea 
Through the shrivell'd tree-leaves, after! — 
" Fair child thy sister is ! 
But better loveth she 
Thy golden comb than thy posied flowers — 
And better both, than thee, — 

Margret, Margret !" 

The ladye did not heed 

The withering on the bough : 
Still calm her smile, albeit, the while, 
A little pale her brow. — 
"I have a father old. 

The lord of ancient halls — 
A hundred friends are in his court, 
Yet only me he calls." 

Margret, Margret ! 

" A hundred knights are in his court ; 
Yet read I by his knee : 
And when forth they go to the tourney show, 
I rise not up to see. 
'Tis a weary book to read — 
My trysts at set of sun : — 
But dear and loving 'neath the stars. 
His blessing when I've done !" 

Margret, Margret ! 

IT trembled on the grass, 

With a low shadowy laughter — 
And moon and star, most bright and far. 
Did shrink and darken, after. — 
" High lord thy fither is ! 
But better loveth he 
His ancient halls than hundred friends, — 
His ancient halls than thee, 

Margret, Margret !" 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



431 



The latlye did not heed 

That the far stars did foil — 
Still calm her smile, albeit, the while — 
Nay ! — but she is not pale ! — 
" I have a more than friend, 
Across the mountains dim : — 
No other's voice is soft to me, 
Unless it nameth him .'" 

Margret, Margret ! 

"Though louder beats mine heart, 
I know his tread again ; 
And his far plume aye, — unless turned away. 
For tears do blind me, then ! 
We brake no gold, a sign 
Of stronger faith to be ; 
But I wear his last look in my soul, 
Which said, I love hut thee /" 

Margret, Margret ! 

IT trembled on the grass, 

With a low shadowy laughter — 
The wind did toll, as a passing soul 
Were sped by church-bell, after ! 
And shadows, 'stead of light, 
Fell from the stars above, 
In flakes of darkness on her face. 
Still bright with trusting love ! 

Margret, Margret ! 

" He loved none but thee ! 
That love is transient too. 
The wild hawk's bill doth dabble still 
r the mouth that vowed the true. 
Will he open his dull eyes. 
When tears fall on his brow ? 
Behold ! the death-vtrorm to his heart 
Is a nearer thing than Hlou .'" 
Margret, Margret ! 

Her face was on the ground — 
None saw the agony ! 
But the men at sea did that night agree 
They heard a drowning cry. 
And, when the morning brake, 
Fast roll'd the river's tide. 
With the green trees waving overhead. 
And a white corse lain beside. 

Margret, Margret ! 

A knight's bloodhound and he 
The funeral watch did keep — 
With a thought o' the chase he stroked its face, 
As it howl'd to see him weep. 
A fair child kiss'd the dead. 
But shrank before the cold ; 
And alone, yet proudly, in his hall 
Did stand a baron old. 

Margret, Margret ! 

Hang uj) my harp again — 
I have no voice for song ! 
Not song, but wail — and mourners pale, 
Not bards — to love belong ! 
Oh, failing human love ! 

Oil, light l>y darkness known ! 
Oh, false, the while thou trcadest earth ! 
Oh, deaf, beneath the stone ! 
Margret, Margret ! 



Nay, friends ! no name but His, 
Whose name as Love appears ! 
Look up to heaven, as God's forgiven, 
And see it not for tears ! 
Yet see, witli spirit-sight, 
Th' eternal Friend undim. 
Who died for love, and joins above 
All friends who love in Him — 
And with His j)ierced hands may He 
The guardian of your clasp'd ones be ! — 
Which prayer doth end my lay of thee, 

Margret, Margret ! 



THE DESERTED GARDEN. 
Since that I saw this gardiiie wasted. — Spenseh. 

I Mixn me in the days departed. 
How often, underneath the sun, 
With childish bounds I used to run 

To a garden long deserted. 

The beds and walks were vanish'd quite ; 
And, wheresoe'er had fallen the spade. 
The greenest grasses nature led. 

To sanctify her right. 

I called it my wilderness. 
For no one enter'd there but I ; 
The sheep look'd in, the grass t' espy. 

And passed ne'ertheless. 

The trees were interwoven wild. 
And spread their boughs enough about 
To keep both sheep and shepherd out. 

But not a happy child. 

Adventurous joy it was for me ! 
I crept beneath the boughs, and found 
A circle smooth of mossy ground 

Beneath a poplar-tree. 

Old garden rose-trees hedged it in, 
Bedropt with roses waxen-white, 
Well satisfied with dew and light. 

And careless to be seen. 

Long years ago it might befall, 
When all the garden flowers were trim. 
The grave old gardener prided hira 

On these the most of all ; 

And lady stately overmuch. 
Who moved with a silken noise, 
Blush'd near them, dreaming of the voice 

That liken'd her to such ! 

And these, to make a diadem. 
She may have often pluck'd and twined, — ■ 
Half-smiling as it came to mind, 

That few would look at them. 

Oh ! little thought that lady proud, 
A child would watch her fair while rose. 
When buried lay her whiter brows, 

And silk was changed for shroud ! — 



432 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



I 

L 



Nor thought that gardener, full of scorns 
For men unlearned and simple phrase, 
A child would bring it all its praise, 

By creeping through the thorns ! 

To me, upon my low moss seat, 
Though never a dream the roses sent 
Of science or love's compliment, 

I ween they smelt as sweet. 

Nor ever a grief was mine, to see 
The trace of human step departed : — 
Because the garden was deserted. 

The blither place for me ! 

Friends, blame me not ! a narrow ken 
Hath childhood 'twixt the sun and sward ! 
We draw the moral afterward — 

We feel the gladness then ! 

And gladdest hours for me did glide 
In silence at the rose-tree wall : 
A thrush made gladness musical 

Upon the other side. 

Nor he nor I did e'er incline 
I'o mar or pluck the blossoms white. — 
How should I know but that they might 

Lead lives as glad as mine ] 

To make my hermit-home complete, 
I brought clear water from the spring. 
Praised in its own low murmuring, — 

And cresses glossy wet. 

And so, I thought my likeness grew 
(Without the melancholy tale) 
To gentle hermit of the dale, 

And Angelina too ! 

For oft I read, within my nook, 
Such minstrel stories, till the breeze 
Made sounds poetic in the trees, — 

And then I shut the book. 

If I shut this wherein I write, 
I hear no more the wind athwart 
Those trees ! — nor feel that childish heart 

Delighting in delight ! 

My childhood from my life is parted ; 
My footstep from the moss which drew 
Its fairy circle round : anew 

The garden is deserted ! 

Another thrush may there rehearse 
The madrigals which sweetest are ; — 
No more for me ! — myself, afar. 

Do sing a sadder verse ! 

Ah me ! ah me ! — when erst I lay 
In that child's-nest so greenly wrought, 
I laughed to myself and thought, 

" The time will pass away !" 

I laughed still, and did not fear 
But that, whene'er was past away 
The childish time, some happier play 

My womanhood would cheer. 



I knew the time would pass away, — 
And yet, beside the rose-tree wall, 
Dear God ! — how seldom, if at all, 

I looked up to pray ! 

The time is past ! — and now that grows 
The cypress high among the trees. 
And I behold white sepulchres 

As well as the white rose — 

When wiser, meeker thoughts are given, 
And I have learn'd to lift my face. 
Remembering earth's greenest place 

The colour draws from heaven — 

It something saith for earthly pain, 
But more for heavenly promise free. 
That I who was, would shrink to be 

That happy child again ! 



LOVED ONCE. 

I class'd and counted once 
Earth's lamentable sounds — the well-a-day, 

The jarring yea and nay, 
The fall of kisses upon senseless clay, — 

The sobb'd farewell, the greeting mournfuler, — 

But all those accents were 
Less bitter with the leaven of earth's despair 

Than I thought these — " loved once." 

And who saith "T loved once ?" — 
Not angels ; whose clear e5'es love, love foresee ; 

Love through eternity — 
Who by " to love," do apprehend " to be." 

Not God, called love. His noble crown-name; casting 

A light too broad for blasting ! 
The great God, changing not for everlasting, 

Saith never, " I loved once." 

Nor ever " I loved once" 
Wilt thou say, O meek Christ, O victim-friend ! 

The nail and curse may rend. 
But, having loved. Thou lovest to the end. 

This is man's saying! Impotent to move 

One spheric star above, 
Man desecrates the eternal God-v?ord Love, 

With his " no more" and " once." 

How say ye, " We loved once," 
Blasphemers ? Is your earth not cold enow. 

Mourners, without that snow 1 
Ah, sweetest friend — and would ye wrong me so'i 

And would ye say of ??7e, whose heart is known. 
Whose prayers have met your own : [shone. 

Whose tears have fallen for you; whose smile hath 
Your words — " We loved her once V 

Could ye " we loved her once" 
Say cold of me, when dwelling out of sight 1 

When ha])pirr friends aright 
(Not truer) stand between me and your light? 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



433 



When, like a flower kept too long in the shade, 

Ye find my colours fade, 
And all that is not love in me decay'd, 

Say ye, " We loved her once ]" 

Will ye, " We loved her once" 
Say after, when the bearers leave the door 1 

When having murmur'd o'er 
My last " Oh say it not," I speak no more ? 

Not so — not then — least thex! when life is shriven. 

And death's full joy is given, — 
Of those who sit and love you up in heaven, 

Say not, « We loved them once." 

Say never, " We loved once :" 
God is too near above — the grave below : 

And all our moments go 
Too quickly past our souls for saying so. 

The mysteries of life and death avenge 

Affections light of range — 
There comes no change to justify that change, 

Whatever comes — loved once ! 

And yet that word of " once" 
Is humanly acceptive — kings have said. 

Shaking a discrown'd head, 
" We ruled once," idiot tongues, " we once bested." 

Cripples once danced i' the vines, and warriors 
proved 

To nurse's rocking moved : [loved 

But Love strikes one hour — Love ! Those never 

Who dream that they loved once. 



THE SLEEP. 

" He giveth Ilis beloved sleep." — Psalm cxxvii. 2. 

Of all the thoughts of God that are 
Borne inward unto souls afar, 

Along the Psalmist's music deep — 
Now tell me if that any is, 
For gift or grace surpassing this — 

" He giveth His beloved sleep V 

What would we give to our beloved ? 
The hero's heart, to be unmoved — 

The poet's star-tuned harp, to sweep — 
The senate's shout to patriot vows — 
The monarch's crown, to light the brows 1 — 

" He giveth His beloved sleep." 

What do we give to our beloved 1 
A little faith, all undisproved — 

A little dust, to overweep — 
And bitter memories, to make 
The whole earth blasted for our sake ? 

" He giveth His beloved sleep." 

" Sleep soft, beloved !" we sometimes say. 
But have no tune to charm away 

Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep : 
But never doleful dream again 
Shall break the happy slumber, when 

" He giveth His beloved sleep." 
55 



earth, so full of dreary noises ! 
O men, with wailing in your voices ! 
O delved gold, the wallers heap ! 

strife, O curse, that o'er it fall ! 
God makes a silence through you all, 

And " giveth His beloved sleep." 

His dew drops mutely on the hill ; 
His cloud above it saileth still, 

Though on its slope men toil and reap ! 
More softly than the dew is shed, 
Or cloud is floated overhead, 

" He giveth His beloved sleep." 

Ha ! men may wonder while they scan 
A living, thinking, feeling man, 

In such a rest his heart to keep ; 
But angels say — and through the word 

1 ween their blessed smile is heard — 

" He giveth His beloved sleep !" 

For me, my heart, that erst did go, 
Most like a tired child at a show. 

That sees through tears the juggler's leap, — 
Would now its wearied vision close, 
Would childlike on His love repose. 

Who " giveth His beloved sleep !" 

And, friends ! — dear friends ! — when it shall be 
That this low breath is gone from me, 

And round my bier ye come to weep — 
Let me, most loving of you all. 
Say, not a tear must o'er her fall — 

" He giveth His beloved sleep !" 



EARTH. 



How beautiful is earth ! my starry thought? 
Look down on it from their unearthly sphere, 
And sing symphonious — Beautiful is earth ! 
The lights and shadows of her myriad hills; 
The branching greenness of her myriad woods; 
Her sky-affecting rocks ; her zoning sea ; 
Her rushing, gleaming cataracts ; her streams 
That race below, the winged clouds on high ; 
Her pleasantness of vale and meadow ; — 

Hush! 
Mesecmeth through the leafy trees to ring 
A chime of bells to falling waters tuned; 
Whereat comes heathen Zephyrus. out of breath 
With rimning up the hills, and shakes his hair 
From off his gleesome forehead, bold and glad 
With keeping blythe Dan Phoebus company ; — 
And throws him on the grass, though half-afraid, 
First glancing round, lest tempests should be nigh ; 
And lays close to the ground his ruddy lips, 
And shapes their beauty into sound, and calls 
On all the petall'd flowers that sit beneath 
In hiding-])laces from the rain and snow, 
To loosen the hard soil, and leave their cold, 
Sad idlesse, and betake them up to him. 
They straightway hear his voice — 

A thought did come. 
And press from out my soul the heathen dream. 
Mine eyes wetc purged. Straightway did I bind 
20 



J 



434 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



Round me the garment of my strength, and heard 
Nature's death-shrieking — the hereafter cry, 
When he o' the lion voice, the rainbow-crown'd, 
Shall stand upon the mountains and the sea, 
And swear by earth, by heaven's throne, and Him 
Who sittoth on the throne, there shall be time 
No more, no more ! Then, veil'd Eternity 
Shall straight unveil her awful countenance 
Unto the reeling worlds, and take the place 
Of seasons, years, and ages. Aye and aye 
Shall be the time of day. The wrinkled heaven 
Shall yield her silent sun, made blind and white 
With an exterminating light: the wind, 
Unchained from the poles, nor having charge 
Of cloud or ocean, with a sobbing wail 
Shall rush among the stars, and swoon to death. 
Yea, the shrunk earth, appearing livid pale 
Beneath the red-tongued flame, shall shudder by 
From out her ancient place, and leave — a void. 
Yet haply by that void the saints redeem'd 
May sometimes stray ; when memory of sin 
Ghost-like shall rise upon their holy souls ; 
And on their lips shall lie the name of earth 
In paleness and in silentness ; until, 
Each looking on his brother, face to face, 
And bursting into sudden happy tears, 
(The only tears undried) shall murmur — " Christ!" 



THE STUDENT. 

"Mr midnight lamp is weary as my soul, — 
And, being unimmortal, has gone out ! 
And now, alone, yon moony lamp of heaven — 
Which God lit, and not man — illuminates 
These volumes, others wrote in weariness, — 
As I have read them ; and this cheek and brow, 
Whose paleness, burned in with heats of thought, 
Would make an angel smile, to see how ill 
Clay, thrust from Paradise, consorts with mind — 
If angels could, like men, smile bitterly ! 

" Yet must my brow be paler ! I have vow'd 
To clip it with the crown which cannot fade, 
When it is faded. Not in vain ye cry, 
Oh ! glorious voices, that survive the tongues 
From whence was drawn your separate sovereignty. 
For I would reign beside you ! I would melt 
The golden treasures of my health and life 
Into that name ! My lips are vow'd apart 
From cheerful words — mine ears from pleasant 

sounds — 
Mine eyes from sights God made so beautiful — 
My feet from wanderings under shady trees — 
My hands from clasping of dear-loving friends — 
My very heart from feelings which move soft ! 
Vow'd am I from the day's delightsomeness. 
And dreams of night! — and when thehouseisdumb 
In sleep — which is the pause 'twixt life and life — 
I live and waken thus ; and pluck away 
Slumber's sleek poppies from my pained lids — 
Goading my mind, with thongs wrought by herself. 
To toil and struggle along this mountain-path — 
Which hath no mountain-airs — until she sweat, 
Ifike Adam's brow, — and gasp, and rend away, 
In agony, her garment of the flesh !" 



And so, his midnight lamp was lit anew, — 
And burn'd till morning. But his lamp of life 
Till morning burn'd not ! He was found embraced. 
Close, cold and stiff, by death's compelling sleep ; 
His breast and brow supported on a page 
Character'd over with a praise ol fame, — 
Of its divineness and beatitude — 
Words which had often caused that heart to throb, 
That cheek to burn ; though silent lay they, now, — 
Without a single beating in the pulse. 
And all the fever gone ! 

I saw a bay 
Spring, verdant, from a newly-fashion'd grave : 
The grass upon the grave was verdanter, — 
That being water'd by the eyes of One 
Who bore not to look up toward the tree! 
Others look'd on it — some, with passing glance, 
Because the light wind stirred in its leaves ; 
And some, with sudden lighting of the soul. 
In admiration's ecstasy ! — ay ! some 
Did wag their heads like oracles, and say, 
" 'Tis very well !" But none remembered 
The heart which housed the root — except that One 
Whose sight was lost in weeping ! 

Is it thus, 
Ambition! — idol of the intellect? 
Shall we drink aconite, alone to use 
Thy golden bowl — and sleep ourselves to death, 
To dream thy visions about life ] Oh, power ! 
That art a very feebleness ! — before 
Thy clayey feet we bend our knees of clay, — 
And round thy senseless brow bind diadems. 
With paralytic hands, — and shout " A god !" 
With voices mortal-hoarse ! Who can discern 
Th' infirmities they share in % Being blind. 
We cannot see thy blindness : — being weak. 
We cannot feel thy weakness : — being low, 
We cannot mete thy baseness : — being unwise, 
We cannot understand thine idiocy ! 



THE CRY OF THE HUMAN. 

" There is no God," the foolish saith — 

But none, "there is no sorrow :" 
And nature oft the cry of faith 

In bitter need will borrow. 
Eyes, which the preacher could not school, 

By wayside graves are raised. 
And lips say, " God be pitiful," 

That ne'er said, " God be praised." 
Be pitiful — 
Be pitiful, O God ! 

The tempest shootcth from the steep 

The shadow of its coming : 
The beasts and birds anear us creep, 

As power were in the human ! 
Power ! — while above, the mountain's shake. 

We spirits tremble under ! 
The hills have echoes — but we make 

No answer to the thunder. 

Be pitiful — 

Be pitiful, O God. 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



435 



Perhaps the war is in the plains ; 

Earth feels new scythes upon her : 
We reap our brothers for the wains, 

And call the harvest honour! 
Draw out confronted line to line, 

The natures all inherit ; 
Then kill, curse on, by that same sign, 

Clay, clay ; and spirit, spirit. 

Be pitiful — 

Be pitiful, O God. 

Perhaps the plague is in the town — 

And never a bell is tolling ; 
And corpses, jostled 'neath the moon, 

Nod to the death-cart's rolling. 
The strong man calleth for the cup, 

The young maid brings it weeping: 
The wife from her sick babe looks up, 

And shrieks away its sleeping. 

Be pitiful — 

Be pitiful, God. 

We tremble by the harmless bed 

Of one loved and departed. 
Our tears drop on the lids that said. 

Last night, " Be stronger-hearted !" 
Clasp, clasp the friendly fingers close — 

We stand here all as lonely, 
To see a light on dearest brows 

Which is the daylight only. 

Be pitiful — 

Be pitiful, O God. 

The happy children come to us 

And look up in our faces ; 
They ask us, was it thus and thus. 

When we were in their places ? 
We cannot speak : we see anew 

The hills we used to live in — 
And feel our mother's smile press through 

The kisses she is giving. 

Be pitiful — 

Be pitiful, God. 

We pray together at the kirk 

For mercy, mercy solely — 
Hands weary with the evil work, 

We lift them to the Holy. 
The corpse is calm below our knee, 

Its spirit bright before thee : 
Between them, worse than either, we — 

Without the rest or glory ; 

Be pitiful — 

Be pitiful, O God. 

We leave the communing of men 

The murmur of the passions, 
And live alone, to live again 

To endless generations. 
Are we so brave 1 The sea and sky 

In silence lift their mirrors, 
And, glass'd therein, our spirits high 

Recoil from their own terrors. 

Be pitiful — 

Be pitiful, God. 

We sit on hills our childhood wist. 
Woods, hamlets, streams beholding, 



The sun strikes through the farthest mist. 

The city's spires to golden. 
The city's golden spire it was. 

When hope and health were strongest. 
And now it is the kirkyard grass 
We look upon the longest. 

Be pitiful — 

Be pitiful, God. 

But soon all vision waxeth dull : 

Men whisper, " He is dying !" 
We cry no more, " Be pitiful" — 

We have no strength for crying. 
No strength, no need ! Oh, eyes of mine, 

Look up, and triumph rather. 
So, in the depth of God's divine, 

The Son adjures the Father, 

Be pitiful — 

Be pitiful, O God. 



THE CHILD AND THE WATCHER. 

Slfkp on, baby on the floor. 

Tired of all the playing — 
Sleep with smile the sweeter for 

That you dropp'd away in ; 
On your curls' fair roundness stand 

Golden lights serenely — 
One cheek, push'd out by the hand, 

Folds the dimple inly. 
Little head and little foot 

Heavy laid for pleasure, 
Underneath the lids half-shut 

Slants the shining azure — 
Open-soul'd in noonday sun. 

So, you lie and slumber; 
Nothing evil having done, 

Nothing can encumber. 

I, who cannot sleep as well. 

Shall I sigh to view you 1 
Or sigh further to foretell 

All that may undo you 1 
Nay, keep smiling, little child. 

Ere the fate appeareth ! 
I smile, too ! for patience mild 

Pleasure's token weareth. 
Nay, keep sleeping before loss ! 

/shall sleep, though losing! 
As by cradle, so by cross. 

Sweet is the reposing. 

And God knows, who sees us twain, 

Child at childish leisure, 
I am all as tired of pain 

As you are of pleasure. 
Very soon, too, by^ His grace 

Gently wrapt around me, 
I shall show as calm a face, 

I shall sleep as soundly ! 
Differing in this, that you 

Clasp your playthings sleeping. 
While my hand must drop the few 

Given to my keeping — 



436 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



Differing in this, that I 

Sleeping, must be colder, 
And in waking presently, 

Brighter to beholder — 
Difi'ering in this beside — 

(Sleeper, have you heard me T 
Do you move, and open wide 

Your great eyes toward me?) 
That while I you draw withal 

From this slumber solely. 
Me, from mine, an angel shall, 

Trumpct-tongued and holy '. 



CATERINA TO CAMOENS.* 

Ox the door you will not enter, 

I have gazed too long — Adieu ! 
Hope hath lost her peradventure — 
Death is near me — and not you f 
Come and cover, 
Poet-lover, 
These faint eyelids — so, to screen 
« Sweetest eyes were ever seen." 

All is changing! Cold and gray 

Streams the sunshine through the door. 
If you stood there, would you say 
« Love, [ love you," as before ? , 
Wlien death lies 
On the eyes 
Which you sang of that yestreen, 
As the sweetest ever seen '! 

When I heard you hymn them so. 
In my courtly days and bowers, 
Others' praise — I let it go — ' 
Only hearing that of yours ; 
Only saying 
In heart-playing, 
•'Blessedest mine eyes have been. 
Since the sweetest his have seen !" 

Now you wander far and farther, 

Little guessing of my pain ! 
Now you think me smiling rather, 
And you smile me back again — 
Ay, and oft 
Murmur soft, 
In your revery serene — 
" Sweetest eyes were ever seen !" 

And I think, were you beside them, 

Near this bed I die upon ; 
Though the beauty you denied them. 
As you stood there looking down, 
You would still 
Say at will. 
For the love's sake found therein, 
" Sweetest eyes were ever seen !" 



* The I idy died during the absence of her poet, and is 
supposed to muse thus while dyin? ; referring to the 
verse in which he had recorded the sweetness of her 
eyes. 



Nay, if ymi look'd down upon them, 

And if they look'd up to yoii, 
All the light which had forgone them 
They would gather back anew ! 
They would be, 
Verily, 
Love-transfoTm'd to beauty's sheen, 
" Sweetest eyes were ever seen !" 

Still no step ! The fountain's warble 

In the courtyard sounds alone : 
As the water to the marble. 
So my heart falls with a moan 
From love-sighing 
To this dying ! 
Love resigns to death, I ween, 
" Sweetest eyes were erer seen !" 

Will you come, when I'm departed 
Where all sweetnesses are hid — 
Where your voice, my tender-hearted. 
Will not lift up either lid — 
Cry, lover ! 
Love is over : 
Cry beneath the cypress green, 
" Sweetest «yes were ever seen I" 

When the " Angelus" is ringing. 

Past the convent will you go. 
And remember the soft singing 
Which we heard there long ago T 
I walk'd onward. 
Looking downward. 
Till you cried, " What do you mean, 
Sweetest eyes were ever seen 1" 

At the tryst-place by the river, 

Will you sit upon onr stone. 
And think how ive said " for ever," 
And weep sore to be alone ? 
" Water-lily, 
Sweet and stilly" — 
Said I — " Ay," you murmur'd then, 
" Sweetest eyes were ever seen !" 

Underneath the palace lattice. 

Will you ride as you have done ? 
If a face flash out there, that is 
Not the true, familiar one ; 
For oh, truly, 
(Think it duly !) 
There have watch'd you, morn and e'en, 
" Sweetest eyes were ever seen." 

When the palace ladies, sitting 

Round your gittern, shall have said — 
" Sing the lovely stanzas written 
For that lady who is dead" — 
Will you. trying. 
Break off, sighing, 
Or sing — dropping tears between — 
'•Sweetest eyes were ever seen ?" 

" Sweetest eyes !" How sweet, in flowings 

Of all tune, the burden is ! 
Though you sang a hundred poems, 

Still the best one would be this. 



ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. 



437 



Still I hear it 
'Twixt my spirit 
And the earth-noise intervene — 
" Sweetest eyes were ever seen !" 

But the priest waits for the praying. 
And the choir are on tlieir knees ; 
And the soul should pass away in 
Strains more solemn-pure than these. 
" Miserere" 
For the weary ! 
Now no longer for Catrine, 
" Sweetest eyes were ever seen !" 

Keep this riband,* take and keep it, 

I have loosed it from my hair. 
Feeling, while you over weep it, 
Not alone in your despair — 

Since with saintly 
Watch, unfaintly 
Out of heaven, shall o'er you lean 
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen !" 

But — but, now — yetunremoved 

Up to heaven — they glisten fast — 
You may cast away, beloved. 
In the future all the past ! 

That old phrase 
May be praise 
For some fairer bosom-queen, 
" Sweetest eyes were ever seen !" 

Eyes of mine ! what are ye doing ? 

Faithless, faithless — praised amiss, 
If one tear be of your showing, 
Shed for any hope of His ! 

Death hath boldness 
In its coldness, 
If one false tear should demean 
" Sweetest eyes were ever seen !" 

I will look out to his future — 

I will bless it till it shine ! 
Should he ever be a suitor 
Unto other eyes than mine, 

Sunshine gild them, 
Angels shield them. 
Whatsoever eyes terrene 
Then be sweetest ever seen ! 



DESPAIR. 

I TELL you, hopeless grief is passionless ; 
That only men incredulous of despair. 
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air 
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access 
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness 
In hearts, as countries, licth silent, bare 
Under the blenching, vertical eye-glare 
Of the free chartcr'd heavens. Be still ! express 
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death! 
Most like a monumental statue set 
In everlasting watch and moveless wo, 
Till itseif crumble to the dust beneath. 
Touch it, spectator! Are its eyelids wet] 
If it could weep, it could arise and go ! 

• .She left him the riband from her hair. 



THE DEPARTED. 

Whkn some beloved voice, which was to you 
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly. 
And silence against which you dare not cry 
Aches round you with an anguish dreadly new — 
What hope, what help ? What music will undo 
That silence to your .sense ! Not friendship's sigh, 
Not reason's labour'd proof, not melody 
Of viols, nor the dancers footing through ; 
Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales, 
Whose hearts leap upward from the cypress trees 
To Venus' star ! nor yet the spheric laws 
Selt-chanted — nor the angels' sweet " all hails," 
Met in the smile of God ! Nay, none of these ! 
Speak, Christ at His right hand, and fill this pause. 

WHAT ARE WE SET ON EARTH FOR? 

What are we set on earth for ? Say, to toil ! 
Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines 
For all the heat o' the sun, till it declines. 
And death's mild curfew shall from work assoil. 
God did anoint thee with his odorous oil 
To wrestle, not to reign — and he assigns 
All thy tears over like pure crystallines 
Unto thy fellows, working the same soil. 
To wear for amulets. So others shall 
Take patience, labour, to their heart and hand. 
From thy hand, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer. 
And God's grace fructify through thee to all ! 
The least flower with a brimming cup may stand 
And share its dew-drop with another near. 



THE SPINNING-WHEEL. 

The woman singeth at her spinning-wheel 

A pleasant song, ballad or barcarolle. 

She thinketh of her song, upon the whole, 

Far more than of her flax ; and yet the reel 

Is full, and artfully her fingers feel, 

With quick adjustment, provident control, 

The lines, too subtly twisted to unroll, 

Out to the perfect thread. I hence appeal 

To the dear Christian church — that we may do 

Our Father's business in these temples mirk. 

So swift and steadfast, so intent and strong — 

While so, apart from toil, our souls pursue 

Some high, calm, spheric tune — proving our work 

The better for the sweetness of our song. 



THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION. 

With stammering lips and insufficient sound 
I strive and struggle to deliver right 
That music of my nature, day and night 
Both dream, and thought, and feeling interwound, 
And inly answering all the senses round 
With octaves of a mystic depth and height. 
Which step out grandly to the infinite 
From the dark edges of the sensual ground ! 
This song of soul I struggle to outbear 
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole, 
And utter ail myself into the air — 
But if I did it — as the thunder-roll 
Breaks its own cloud — my flesh would perish there, 
Before that dread apocalypse of soul. 
20 2 



WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. 



WiNTHROP Mackworth Praed, we believe, 
was a native of London, where members of 
his family now reside, occupied with the busi- 
ness of banking. The author of " Lillian" 
was placed, when very young', at Eton, where 
John Moultrie, Henry Nelson Coleridge, 
and other clever men of kindred tastes, were 
his associates. He was principal editor of 
"The Etonian," one of the most spirited and 
piquant under-graduate magazines ever sent 
from a college. From Eton he went to Cam- 
bridge, where he carried away an unprece- 
dented number of prizes, obtained by Greek 
and Latin odes and epigrams and English 
poems. On leaving Trinity College, he set- 
tled in London, and soon after became asso- 
ciated with Thomas Babington Macaulay, 
and other young men who have since been 
distinguished at the bar or in the senate, in 
the conduct of " Knight's Quarterly Maga- 
zine." After the discontinuance of this mis- 
cellany, he occasionally wrote for the "New 
Monthly," and for the annuals ; and a friend 
of his informs us that a large number of his 



playful lyrics, thrown off with infinite ease 
and readiness, are yet unprinted in the pos- 
session of his numerous friends. 

For a few years before his death, Mr. Pkaed 
was in parliament, where he was considered a 
rising member, though his love of ease, and 
social propensities, prevented the proper culti- 
vation and devotion of his powers. He died 
on the 15th of July, 1839. 

" Lillian," with the exception of Drake's 
" Culprit Fay," is the most purely imagina- 
tive poem with which we are acquainted. 
Praed delighted in themes of this sort, and 
" The Red Fisherman," the " Bridal of Bel- 
mont," and some of his other pieces, show 
the exceeding cleverness with which he reared 
upon them his fanciful creations. "The Vi- 
car," " Josephine," and a few more of the 
lively and graceful compositions in this 
volume have been widely known in this coun- 
try through the periodicals, and in the present 
season Mr. Langley of New York has issued 
a very neat edition of his poetical writings, 
with a memoir. 



THE RED FISHERMAN. 

The abbot arose, and closed his book, 

And donn'd his sandal shoon, 
And vvander'd forth, alone, to look 

Upon the summer moon : 
A starlight sky was o'er his head, 

A quiet breeze around ; 
And the flowers a thrilling fragrance shed, 

And the waves a soothing sound : 
It was not an hour, nor a scene, for au^ht 

But love and calm delight ; 
Yet the lioly man had a cloud of thought 

On his wrinkled brow that night. 
He gazed on the river that gurgled by, 

But he thought not of the reeds: 
He clasp'd his gilded rosary. 

But he did not tell the beads ; 
If he look'd to the heaven, 't was not to invoke 

The spirit that dwelleth there ; 
If he open'd his lips, the words they spoke 

Had never the tone of prayer. 
A pious priest might the abbot seem, 

He had svvay'd the crosier well ; 
433 



But what was the theme of the abb t's dream, 
The abbot were loth to tell. 
Companionless, for a mile or more, 
He traced the windings of the shore. 
Oh, beauteous is that river still. 
As it winds by many a sloping hill, 
And many a dim o'erarching grove, 
And many a flat and sunny cove, 
And terraced lawns, whose bright arcades 
The honeysnckle sweetly shades, 
And rocks, whose very crags seem bowers, 
So gay they are with grass and flowers ! 

But the abbot was thinking of scenery 
About as much, in sooth, 

As a lover thinks of constancy. 
Or an advocate of truth. 

He did not mark how the skies in wrath 
Grew dark above his head ; 

He did not mark how the mossy path 
Grew damp beneath his tread ; 

And nearer he came, and still more near 
To a pool, in whose recess 

The water had slept for many a year, 
Unchanged and motionless ; 



WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. 



439 



From the river stream it spread away 

The space of half a rood ; 
The surface had the hue of clay 

And the scent of human blood; 
The trees and the herbs that round it grew 

Were venomous and foul; 
And the birds that through the bushes flew 

Were the vulture and the owl ; 
The water was as dark and rank 

As ever a company pump'd ; [hank, 

And the perch, that was nettled and laid on the 

Grew rotten while it jump'd: 
And bold was he who thither came 

At midnight, man or boy ; 
For the place was cursed with an evil name, 

And that name was " The Devil's Decoy !" 

The abbot was weary as abbot could be. 
And he sat down to. rest on the stump of a tree : 
When suddenly rose a dismal tone — 
Was it a song, or was it a moan 1 
" Oh, ho ! Oh, ho ! 
Above, below ! 
Lightly and brightly they glide and go ; 
The hungrj' and keen on the top are leaping, 
The lazy and fat in the depths are sleeping ; 
Fishing is fine when the pool is muddy. 
Broiling is rich when the coals are ruddy !" 
In a monstrous friglit, by the murky light, 
He look'd to the left and he look'd to the right. 
And what was the vision close before him, 
That flung such a sudden stupor o'er him 1 
'Twas a sight to make the hair uprise. 

And the life-blood colder run: 
The startled priest struck both his thighs, 

And the abbey clock struck one ! 

All alone, by the side of the pool, 

A tall man sat on a thrce-legg'd stool, 

Kicking his heels on the dewy sod. 

And putting in order his reel and rod ; 

Red were the rags his shoulders wore, 

And a high red cap on his head he bore; 

His arms and his legs were long and hare; 

And two or three locks of long red hair 

Were tossing about his scraggy neck. 

Like a tatter'd flag o'er a sphttuig wreck. 

It might be time, or it might be trouble. 

Had bent that stout back nearly double — 

Sunk in their deep and hollow sockets 

That blazing couple of Congreve rockets, 

And shrunk and shrivell'd that tawny skin, 

Till it hardly cover'd the bones within. 

The line the abbot saw hitn throw 

Had been fiishion'd and forin'd long ages ago, 

And the hands that work'd his foreign vest 

Ijong ages ago had gone to their rest : 

You would have sworn, as you look'd on them. 

He had fish'd in the flood with Ham and Shem ! 

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks, 

As he took forth a bait from his iron box. 

Minnow or gentle, worm or fly — 

It seem'd not such to the abbot's eye : 

Gaily it glitter'd with jewel and gem, 

And its shape was the shape of a diadem. 



It was fasten'd a gleaming hook about. 
By a chain within and a chain without; 
The fisherman gave it a kick and a spin, 
And the water fizz'd as it tumbled in I 

From the bowels of the earth. 
Strange and varied sounds had birth — 
Now the battle's bursting peal. 
Neigh of steed, and clang of steel ; 
Now an old man's hollow groan 
Echo'd from the dungeon stone ; 
Now the weak and wailing cry 
Of a stripling's agony ! 

Cold by this was the midnight air ; 

But the abbot's blood ran colder, 
When he saw a gasping knight lie there, 
With a gash beneath his clotted hair, 

And a hump upon his shoulder. 
And the loyal Churchman strove in vain 

To mutter a Pater Nosier ; 
For he who writhed in mortal pain 
Was camp'd that night on Bosworth plain — 

The cruel Duke of Glou'ster ! 

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks, 

As he took forth a bait from his iron box. 

It was a haunch of princely size. 

Filling with fragrance earth and skies. 

The corpulent abbot knew full well 

The swelling form, and the steaming smell; 

Never a monk that wore a hood 

Could better have guess'd the very wood 

Where the noble hart had stood at bay. 

Weary and wounded, at close of day. 

Sounded then the noisy glee 
Of a revelling compan}' — 
Sprightly story, wicked jest. 
Rated servant, greeted guest. 
Flow of wine, and flight of cork. 
Stroke of knife, and thrust of fork : 
But, where'er the board was spread, 
Grace, I ween, was never said ! 

Pulling and tugging the fisherman sat; 

And the priest was ready to vomit. 
When he hauled out a gentleman, fine and fat, 
W^ith a belly as big as a brimming vat, 

And a nose as red as a comet. 
" A capital stew," the fisherman said, 

" With cinnamon and sherry!" 
And the abbot turned away his head. 
For his brother was lying before him dead, 

The mayor of St. Edmond's Bury ! 

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks, 

As he took forth a bait from his iron box : 

It was a bundle of beautiful things — 

A peacock's tail, and a butterfly's wings, 

A scarlet slipper, an auburn curl, 

A mantle of silk, and a bracelet of pearl, 

And a packet of letters, from whose sweet fold 

Such a stream of delicate odours roll'd. 

That the abbot fell on his face, and fainted. 

And deem'd his spirit was half-way sainted. 

Sounds seem'd dropping from the skies, 
Stifled whispers, smother'd sighs. 



440 



WINTHROP MA'CKWORTH PRAED. 



And the breath of vernal gales, 
And the voice of nightingales : 
But the nightingales were mute, 
Envious, when an unseen lute 
Shaped the music of its chords 
Into passion's thrilling words : 

" Smile, lady, smile ! — I will not set 
Upon my brow the coronet. 
Till thou wilt gather roses white 
To wear around its gems of light. 
Smile, lady, smile ! — 1 will not see 
Rivers and Hastings bend the knee, 
Till those bewitching lips of thine 
W^ill bid me rise in bliss from mine. 
Smile, lady, smile ! — for who would win 
A loveless throne through guilt and sin I 
Or who would reign o'er vale and hill, 
If woman's heart were rebel still V 

One jerk, and there a lady lay, 

A lady wondrous fair ; 
But the rose of her lip had faded away, 
And her cheek was as white and as cold as clay. 

And torn was her raven hair. 
"Ah, ha!" said the fisher, in merry guise, 

" Her gallant was hook'd before ;" 
And the abbot heaved some piteous sighs, 
For oft he had bless'd those deep blue eyes, 

The eyes of Mistress Shore ! 

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks. 

As he took forth a bait from his iron box. 

Many the cunning sportsman tried, 

Many he flung with a frown aside ; 

A minstrel's harp, and a miser's chest, 

A hermit's cowl, and a baron's crest, 

Jewels of lustre, robes of price. 

Tomes of heresy, loaded dice. 

And golden cups of the brightest wine 

That ever was press'd from the Burgundy vine; 

There was a perfume of sulphur and nitre, 

As he came at last to a bishop's mitre ! 

From top to toe the abbot shook, 

As the fisherman armed his golden hook ; 

And awfully were his features wrought 

By some dark dream or waken'd thought. 

Look how the fearful felon gazes 

On the scaflold his countrj''s vengeance raises. 

When the lips are crack'd and tlie jaws are dry 

With the thirst which only in death shall die : 

Mark the mariner's phrcnsied frown 

As the swaling wherry settles down. 

When peril has numb'd the sense and will, 

Though the hand and the foot may struggle still : 

Wilder far was the abbot's glance. 

Deeper far was the abbot's trance : 

Fix'd as a monument, still as air. 

He bent no knee, and he breathed no prayer ; 

But he sign'd — he knew not why or how — 

The sign of the Cross on his clammy brow. 

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks. 
As he stalk'd away with his iron box. 

" Oh, ho ! Oh, ho ! 

The cock doth crow ; 
It is time for the fisher to rise and go. 



Fair luck to the abbot, fair luck to the shrine ! 

He hath gnaw'd in twain my choicest line; 

Let him swim to the north, let him swim to the 

south, 
The abbot will carry my hook in his mouth !" 

The abbot had preach'd for many years, 

With as clear articulation 
As ever was heard in the House of Peers 

Against emancipation ; 
His words had made battalions quake, 

Had roused the zeal of martyrs ; 
He kept the court an hour awake. 

And the king himself three quarters: 
But ever, from that hour, 'tis said, 

He stammer'd and he stutter'd. 
As if an axe went through his head 

With every word he utter'd. 
He stutter'd o'er blessing, he stutter'd o'er ban, 

He stutter'd drunk or dry ; 
And none but he and the fisherman 

Could tell the reason why ! 



THE VICAR. 

Some years ago, ere Time and Taste 

Had turn'd our parish topsy-turvy. 
When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste, 

And roads as little known as scurvy. 
The man who lost his way between 

St. Mary's Hill and Sandy Thicket, 
Was always shown across the green, 

And guided to the parson's wicket. 

Back flew the bolt of lisson lath ; 

Fair Margaret in her tidy kirtle. 
Led the lorn traveller up the path, 

Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle : 
And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray, 

Upon the parlour steps collected, 
Wagg'd .all their tails and seem'd to say, 

" Our master knows you ; you 're expected !" 

Vp rose the Reverend Dr. Brown, 

Up rose the Doctor's ''winsome marrow ;" 
The lady laid her knitting down, 

Her husband clasp'd his ponderous Barrow; 
Whafe'er the stranger's caste €«■ creed. 

Pundit or papist, saint or sinner, 
He found a stable for bis steed, 

And welcome for himself, and dinner. 

If, when he reach'd his journey's end. 

And warm"d himself in court or college, 
He had not gain'd an honest fiiend, 

And twenty curious scraps of knowledge;— 
If he departed as he came, 

With no new lieiit on love or liquor, — 
Good sooth, the traveller was to blame, 

And not the vicarage, or the vicar. 

His talk was like a stream which runs 
With rapid change from rocks to roses: 

It slipp'd from politics to puns : 
It pass'd from Mahomet to Moses: 



WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. 



441 



Beginning with the laws which keep 
The planets in their radiant courses, 

And ending with some precept deep 
For dressing eels or shoeing horses. 

He was a shrewd and sound divine, 

Of loud dissent the mortal terror ; 
And when, by dint of page and line. 

He establish'd truth, or started error. 
The Baptist found him far too deep : 

The Deist sigh'd with saving sorrow ; 
And the lean Levite went to sleep. 

And dream'd of tasting pork to-morrow. 

His sermon never said or show'd 

That earth is foul, that heaven is gracious. 
Without refreshment on the road 

From Jerome, or from Athanasius ; 
And sure a righteous zeal inspired [them, 

The hand and head that penn'd and plann'd 
For all who understood, admired, 

And some who did not understand them. 

He wrote, too, in a quiet way. 

Small treatises, and smaller verses ; 
And sage remarks on chalk and clay, 

And hints to noble lords and nurses; 
True histories of last year's ghost, 

Lines to a ringlet or a turban ; 
And trifles for the Morning Post, 

And nothing for Sylvanus Urban. 

He did not think all mischief fair, 

Although he had a knack of joking; 
He did not make himself a bear. 

Although he had a taste for smoking : 
And when religious sects ran mad. 

He held, in spite of all his learning, 
That if a man's belief is bad, 

It will not be improved by burning. 

And he was kind, and loved to sit 

In the low hut or garnish'd cottage, 
And praise the farmer's homely wit, * 

And share the widow's homelier pottage : 
At his approach complaint grew mild. 

And when his hand unbarr'd the shutter, 
The clammy lips of fever smiled 

The welcome which they could not utter. 

He always had a tale for me 

Of Julius Caesar or of Venus: 
From him I learn'd the rule of three. 

Cat's cradle, leap-frog, and Quae Genus; 
I used to singe his powder'd wig. 

To steal the staff he put such trust in ; 
And make the puppy dance a jig 

When he began to quote Augustin. 

Alack the change ! in vain I look 

For haunts in which my boyhood trifled ; 
The level lawn, the trickling brook, 

The trees I climbed, the beds I rifled : 
The church is larger than before ; 

You reach it by a carriage entry ; 
It holds three hundred people more: 

And pews are fitted up for gentry. 
56 



Sit in the vicar's seat : you'll hear 

The doctrine of a gentle Joiuiian, 
Whose hand is white, whose voice is clear, 

Whose tone is very Ciceronian. 
Where is the old man laid ] — look down. 

And construe on the slab before you, 
Hic Jacet GULIELMUS BROWN, 

ViR Nulla non oojsandls laura. 



SCHOOL AND SCHOOL-FELLOWS. 

Twelve years ago I made a mock 

Of filthy trades and traflics : 
I wonder'd what they meant by stock ; 

I wrote delightful sapphics : 
I knew the streets of Rome and Troy, 

I supp'd with fates and furies ; 
Twelve years ago I was a boy, 

A happy boy, at Drury's. 

Twelve years ago ! — how many a thought 

Of faded paints and pleasures 
Those whisper'd syllables have brought 

From memory's hoarded treasures ! 
The fields, the forms, the beasts, the books, 

The glories and disgraces, 
The voices of dear friends, the looks 

Of old familiar faces. 

Where are my friends ? — I am alone, 

No playmate shares my beaker — 
Some lie beneath the church-yard stone, 

And some before the speaker; 
And some compose a tragedy. 

And sorue compose a rondo ; 
And some draw sword for liberty. 

And some draw pleas for John Doe. 

Tom ?vlill was used to blacken eyes, 

Without the fear of sessions •, 
Charles Medler loath'd false quantities, 

As much as false professions; 
Now Mill keeps order in the land, 

A magistrate pedantic ; 
And Medler's feet repose unscann'd, 

Beneath the wide Atlantic. 

While Nick, whose oaths made such a din, 

Does Dr. Martext's duty; 
And Mullion, with that monstrous chin, 

Is married to a beauty ; 
And Darrel studies, week by week. 

His Mant and not his Manton ; 
And Ball, who was but poor at Greek, 

Is very rich at Canton. 

And I am eight-and-twenty now — 

The world's cold chain has bound me ; 
And darker shades are on my brow, 

And sadder scenes around me: 
In parliament I fill my seat, 

With many other noodles; 
And lay my head in Germyn-street, 

And sip my hock at Doodle's. 



442 



WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. 



But oft when the cares of life 

Have set my temples aching, 
When visions haunt me of a wife, 

When duns await my waking, 
When lady Jane is in a pet, 

Or Hobby in a hurry, 
When Captain Hazard wins a bet. 

Or Beaulieu spoils a curry : 

For hours and hours, I think and talk 

Of each remember'd hobliy ; 
I long to lounge in Poet's Walk — 

To shiver in the lobby ; 
I wish that I could run away 

From house, and court, and levee, 
Where bearded men appear to-day, 

Just Eton boys, grown heavy ; 

That I could bask in childhood's sun. 

And dance o'er childhood's roses; 
And find huge wealth in one pound one, 

Vast wit and broken noses ; 
And pray Sir Giles at Datchet Lane, 

And call the milk-maids Houris ; 
That I could be a boy again — 

A happy boy at Drury's ! 



MEMORY. 

Staxi) on a funeral mound. 

Far, far from all that love thee ; 
With a barren heath around. 

And a cypress bower above thee : 
And think, while the sad wind frets. 

And the night in cold gloom closes, 
Of spring, and spring's sweet violets, 

Of summer, and summer's roses. 

Sleep where the thunders fly 

Across the tossing billow ; 
Thy canopy the sky, 

And the lonely deck thy pillow : 
And dream, while the chill sea-foam 

In mockery dashes o'er thee. 
Of the cheerful hearth, and the quiet home. 

And the kiss of her that bore thee. 

Watch in the deepest cell 

Of the foeman's dungeon tower, 
Till hope's most cherish'd spell 

Has lost its cheering power; 
And sing, while the galling chain 

On every stitf limb freezes, 
Of the huntsman hurrying o'er the plain. 

Of the breath of the mountain breezes. 

Talk of the minstrel's lute, 

The warrior's high endeavour. 
When the honied lips are mute. 

And the strong arm crush'd for ever : 
Look back to the summer sun. 

From the mist of dark December ; 
Then say to the broken-hearted one, 

"'Tis pleasant to remember !" 



JOSEPHINE. 

We did not meet in courtly hall. 

Where birtli and beauty throng, 
Where luxury holds festival, 

And wit awakes the song : 
We met where darker spirits meet. 

In the home of sin and shame. 
Where Satan shows his cloven feet. 

And hides his titled name ; 
And she knew she could not be, love, 

What once she might have been. 
But she was kind to me, love, 

My pretty Josephine. 

We did not part beneath the sky. 

As warmer lovers part. 
Where night conceals the glistening eye. 

But not the throbbing heart; 
We parted on the spot of ground 

Where we first had laugh'd at love. 
And ever the jests were loud around. 

And the lamps were bright above: 
" The heaven is very dark, love. 

The blast is very keen. 
But merrily rides my bark, love — 

Good night, my Josephine !" 

She did not speak of ring or vow. 

But filled the cup of wine. 
And took the roses from her brow 

To make a wreath for mine ; 
And bade me, when the gale should lift 

My light skiff on the wave. 
To think as little of the gift 

As of the hand that gave ; 
" Go gayly o'er the sea, love, 

And find your own heart's queen ; 
And look not back to me, love. 

Your humble Josephine !" 

That garland breathes and blooms no more. 

Past are those idle hours ; 
I would not, could I choose, restore 

'I'he fondness or the flowers; 
Yet oft their wither'd witchery 

Revives its wonted thrill, 
Remember'd — not with passion's sigh. 

But oh ! remember'd still ! 
And even from your side, love. 

And even from this scene, 
One look is o'er the tide, love, 

One thought with Josephine ! 

Alas ! your lips are rosier. 

Your eyes of softer blue. 
And I have never felt for her 

As I have felt for you ; 
Our love was like the snow flakes, 

Which melt before you pass — 
Or the bubble on the wine, which breaks 

Before you lip the glass. 
You saw these eyelids wet, love. 

Which she has never seen; 
But hid me not forget, love, 

My poor Josephine ! 



WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. 



443 



STANZAS. 

I KNOW that it must be, 
Yea! thou art changed — all vvorshipp'd as thou art — 
Mourn'd as thou shall be ! Sickness of the heart 

Hath done its work on thee ! 

Thy dim eyes tell a tale, 
A pitious tale, of vigils ; and the trace 
Of bitter tears is on thy beauteous face, 

Beauteous, and yet so pale ! 

Changed love ! but not. alone ! 
I am not what they think me ; though my cheek 
Wear but its last year's furrow, though I speak 

Thus in my natural tone. 

The temple of my youth 
Was strong in moral purpose : once I felt 
The glory of philosophy, and knelt 

In the pure shrine of truth. 

I went into the storm, 
And mock'd the billows of the tossing sea ; 
I said to Fate, " What wilt thou do to me 1 

I have not harm'd a worm !" 

Vainly the heart is steel'd 
In wisdom's armour ; let her burn her books ! 
I look upon them as the soldier looks 

Upon his cloven shield. 

Virtue and virtue's rest, 
How have they perish'd! Through my onward course 
Repentance dogs my footsteps ! black Remorse 

Is my familiar guest ! 

The glory and the glow 
Of the world's loveliness have pass'd away ; 
And Fate hath little to inflict, to-day. 

And nothing to bestow ! 

Is not the damning line 
Of guilt and grief engraven on me now 1 
And the fierce passion which hath scathed thy brow, 

Hath it not blasted mine ^ 

No matter ! I will turn 
To the straight path of duty ; I have wrought, 
At last, my wayward spirit to be taught 

What it hath yet to learn. 

Labour shall be my lot ; 
My kindred shall be joyful in my praise ; 
And Fame shall twine for me, in after days, 

A wreath I covet not. 

And if I cannot make, 
Dearest ! thy hope my hope, thy trust my trust, 
Yet will I study to be good, and just, 

And blameless, for thy sake. 

Thou may'st have comfort yet ; 
Whate'er the source from which those waters glide. 
Thou hast found healing mercy in their tide ; 

Be happy and forget ! 

Forget me — and farewell ! 
But say not that in me new hopes and fears, 
Or absence, or the lapse of gradual years, 

Will break thy memory's spell ! 



Indelibly, witliin, 
All I have lost is written ; and the theme 
Which silence whispers to my thoughts and dreams 

Is sorrow still — and sin ! 



TIME'S CHANGES. 

I SAW her once — so freslily fair 

That, like a blossom just unfolding. 
She open'd to life's cloudless air; 

And Nature joy'd to view its moulding: 
Her smile it haunts my memory yet — 

Her cheeks' fine hue divinely glowing — 
Her rosebud moutii — lur eyes of jet — 

Around on all their light bestowing: 
Oh ! who could look on such a foim, 

So nobly free, so softly tender, 
And darkly dream that earthly storm 

Should dim such sweet, delicious splendour ! 
For in her mien, and in her face, 

And in her young step's fairy lightness, 
Naught could the rajUured gazer trace 

But beauty's glow, and pleasure's brightness. 

I saw her twice — an alter'd charm — 

But still of magic, richest, rarest. 
Than girlhood's talisman less warm. 

Though yet of earthly sights the fairest ; 
Upon her breast she held a child, 

The very image of its mother; 
Which ever to her smiling smiled, 

They seem'd to live but in each other: — 
But matron cares, or lurking wo, 

Her thoughtless, sinless look had banish'd, 
And from her cheek the roseate glow 

Of girlhood's balmy morn had vanish'd; 
Within her eyes, upon her brow, 

Lay something softer, fonder, deeper, 
As if in dreams some vision'd wo 

Had broke the Elysium of the sleeper. 

I saw her thrice — Fate's dark decree 

In widow's garments had array'd her, 
Yet beautiful she seem'd to be. 

As even my reveries portray 'd her ; 
The glow, the glance had pass'd away. 

The sunshine, and the sparkling glitter; 
Still, though I noted pale decay, 

The retrospect was scarcely bitter ; 
For, in their place a calmness dwelt, 

Serene, subduing, soothing, holy ; 
In feeling which the bosom felt 

That every louder mirth is folly — 
A pensiveness, which is not grief, 

A stillness — as of sunset streaming — 
A fairy glow on flower and leaf, 

Till earth looks on like a landscape dreaming. 

A last time — and unmoved she lay. 
Beyond life's dim, uncertain river, 

A glorious mould of fading clay. 

From whence the spark had fled for ever ! 

I gazed — my breast was like to burst — 
And, as I thought of years departed, 



444 



WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. 



The years wherein I saw her first, 

When she, a girl, was tender-hearted — 
And, when I mused on later days, 

As moved she in her matron duty, 
A happy mother, in the blaze 

Of ripen'd hope, and sunny beauty — 
I felt the chili — I turn'd aside — 

Bleak desolation's cloud came o'er me, 
And being seem'd a troubled tide, 

Whose wrecks in darkness swam before me ! 



THE BELLE OF THE BALL. 

Years — years ago — ere yet my dreams 

Had been of being wise and witty ; 
Ere I had done with writing themes. 

Or yawn'd o'er this infernal Chitty ; 
Years, years ago, while all my joys 

Were in my fowling-piece and filly ; 
In short, while I was yet a boy, 

I fell in love with Laura Lilly. 

I saw her at a country ball ; 

There when the sound of flute and fiddle 
Gave signal sweet in that old hall. 

Of hands across and down the middle. 
Hers was the subtlest spell by far 

Of all that sets young hearts romancing : 
She was our queen, our rose, our star; 

And when she danced — oh, heaven, her dancing! 

Dark was her hair, her hand was white ; 

Her voice was exquisitely tender, 
Her eyes were full of liquid light; 

I never saw a waist so slender; 
Her every look, her every smile, 

Shot right and left a score of arrows ; 
I thought 'twas Venus from her isle, 

I wonder'd where she 'd left her sparrows. 

She talk'd of politics or prayers; 

Of Southey's prose, or Wordsworth's sonnets ; 
Of daggers or of dancing bears, 

Of battles, or the last new bonnets ; 
By candle-light, at twelve o'clock, 

To me it matter'd not a tittle, 
If those bright lips had quoted Locke, 

I might have thought they murmur'd Little. 

Through sunny May, through sultry June, 

I loved her with a love eternal ; 
I spoke her praises to the moon, 

I wrote them for the Sunday Journal. 
My mother laugh'd ; I soon found out 

That ancient ladies have no feeling; 
My father frown'd ; but how should gout 

Find any happiness in kneeling 1 

She was the daughter of a dean. 

Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic ; 
She had one brother just thirteen. 

Whose colour was extremely hectic ; 



Her grandmother, for many a year. 
Had fed the parish with her bounty ; 

Her second cousin was a peer, 

And lord-lieutenant of the county. 

But titles and the three per cents, 

And mortgages, and great relations. 
And India bonds, and tithes and rents, 

Oh ! what are they to love's sensations'? 
Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks. 

Such wealth, such honours, Cupid chooses; 
He cares as little for the stocks. 

As Baron Rothschild for the muses. 

She sketch'd ; the vale, the wood, the beach, 

Grew lovelier from her pencil's shading ; 
She botanized ; I envied each 

Young blossom in her boudoir fading; 
She warbled Handel ; it was grand — 

She made the Catalina jealous; 
She touch'd the organ ; I could stand 

For hours and hours and blow the bellows. 

She kept an album, too, at home. 

Well tiird with all an album's glories; 
Paintings of butterflies and Rome, 

Patterns for trimming, Persian stories ; 
Soft songs to Julia's cockatoo. 

Fierce odes to famine and to slaughter ; 
And autographs of Prince Laboo, 

And recipes of elder water. 

And she was flatter'd, worshipp'd, bored. 

Her steps were watch'd, her dress was noted, 
Her poodle dog was quite adored. 

Her sayings were extremely quoted. 
She laugh'd, and every heart was glad 

As if the taxes were abolish'd ; 
She frown'd, and every look was sad, 

As if the opera were demolish'd. 

She smiled on many just for fun — 

I knew that there was nothing in it ; 
I v^'as the first, the only one 

Her heart had thought of for a minute ; 
I knew it, for she told me so. 

In phrase which was divinely moulded ; 
She wrote a charming hand, and oh ! 

How sweetly all her notes were folded ! 

Our love was like most other loves — 

A little glow, a little shiver ; 
A rosebud and a pair of gloves. 

And "Fly Not Yet," upon the river; 
Some jealousy of some one's heir. 

Some hopes of dying broken-hearted, 
A miniature, a lock of hair. 

The usual vows — and then we parted. 

We parted — months and years roU'd by ; 

We met again four summers after; 
Our parting was all sob and sigh — 

Our meeting was all mirth and laughter ; 
For in my heart's most secret cell. 

There had been many other lodgers; 
And she was not the ball-room belle, 

But only Mrs. — Something — Rogers. 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Alfred Tennyson is the son of a clergy- 
man in Lincolnshire, and was educated at 
Trinity College, Cambridge. Since leaving 
the university he has lived in retirement. His 
first appearance as an aulhcr was in 1830, 
when he published a small volume of verses, 
which was succeeded two years afterwards by 
another entitled Poems chiefly Lyrical. In 
1843 appeared his collected writings in two 
volumes, — the first containing a selection from 
his previous publications, and the second his 
later compositions. 

Mr. Tennyson, says Leigh Hunt, in a 
notice written several years ago of his earlier 
poems, " is of the school of Keats; that is to 
say, it is difficult not to see that Keats has 
been a great deal in his thoughts; and that he 
delights in the same brooding over his sen- 
sations, and the same melodious enjoyment 

of their expression Much, however, as 

he reminds us of Keats, his genius is his 
own : he would have written poetry had his 
precursor written none; and he has, also, a 
vein of metaphysical subtlety, in which the 

other did not indulge He is a great lover 

of a certain home kind of landscape, which he 
delights to paint with a minuteness that in the 
Moated Grange becomes affecting, and in the 
Miller's Daughter would remind us of the 
Dutch school if it were not mixed up with 
the same deep feeling, though varied with a 
pleasant joviality. He has yet given no such 
evidence of sustained and broad power as that 
of Hyperion, nor even of such gentler narra- 
tive as the Eve of St. Agnes and the poems 
of Lamia and Isabella, hut the materials of 
the noblest poetry are abundant in him." 

The general judgment was less favourable 
than that of Mr. Hunt. Tennyson's poems 
were keenly reviewed in several of the lead- 
ing journals of criticism, and he is said at an 
early day to have withdrawn from the market 
and burned all the unsold copies. Yet the 
volumes published in 1830 and 1832 contained 
Mariana, Oriana, Madeline, The Death of the 
Old Year, The Miller's Daughter, CEnone, 
and other pieces quite equal to the larger num- 
ber of his more recenl productions. 



Locksley Hall is in my opinion the best of 
Tennyson's works — the poem in which there 
is the truest feeling, the most strength, direct- 
ness, and intensity. He is sensible of his 
want of the inventive faculty, and rarely 
attempts the creation of incidents. Dora was 
suggested by one of Miss Mitford's portraits, 
and the Lady Clare by Mrs. Farrar's Inhe- 
ritance ; The Day Dream, The Lady of Sha- 
lott, Godiva, and other narrative pieces, are 
versions of old stories; and the poetry of The 
Arabian Nights was ready made to his hand, 
lie excels most in his female portraitures; 
but while delicate and graceful they are in- 
definite, while airy and spiritual are intan- 
gible. As we read Byron or Burns beauti- 
ful forms stand before us, we see the action 
of their breathing and read the passionate lan- 
guage of their eyes ; but we have glimpses 
only of the impalpable creations of Tennyson, 
as on gold-bordered clouds they bend to listen 
to dream-like melodies which go up from fairy 
lakes and enchanted palaces, 'inhere are excep- 
tions : as the picture of the Sleeping Beauty, 
in the Day Dream, which is rarely excelled for 
statue-like definiteness and warmth of colour- 
ing. Some of his portraits of men also are fine. 
It would be difficult to discover any thing in its 
way more graphic than this description from 
The Miller's Daughter: — 

I spe the wealthy niiller yet. 

His double chin, his pnrlly size. 
And who that knew him conld forget 

The busy wrinkles round his eyesf 
The slow, wise suiilc, th it rournl about 

His dusty fnrehi'ad daily cuil'd, 
Seem'd half within and half without. 

And full of dealings with the world. 

There are equally felicitous stanzas in 
several of his longer poems, which are gene- 
rally, more than those quoted in this volume, 
disfigured by affectations of thought and ex- 
pression. Mr. Tennyson has studied Keats, 
Shei.i.ey, and the Greek poets, and, of the 
last especially, has made free and unacknow- 
ledged use. The peculiarities of his style 
have attracted attention, and his writings have 
enough intrinsic merit, probably, to secure him 
a permanent place in the third or fourth rank 

of contemporary English poets. 

•2 p 445 



446 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



LOCKSLEY HALL. 

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis 

early morn : 
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound 

upon the bugle horn. 

'Tis the place, and round the gables, as of old, the 

curlews call. 
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over 

Locksley Hall ; 

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the 
sandy tracts. 

And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cata- 
racts. 

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I 

went to rest. 
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the 

west. 

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through 

the mellow shade. 
Glitter like a swarm of fije-flies tangled in a silver 

braid. 

Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a 

youth sublime 
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result 

of Time ; 

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land 

reposed ; 
When I clung to all the present for the promise 

that it closed : 

When I dipp'd into the future far as human eye 

could see ; 
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder 

that would be. — 

In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the 

robin's breast ; 
In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself 

another crest ; 

In the spring a livelier iris changes on the bur- 

nish'd dove ; 
In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns 

to thoughts of love. 

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should 
be for one so young. 

And her eyes on all my motions with a mute ob- 
servance hung. 

And I said, " My cousin Amy, speak, and speak 

the truth to me. 
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets 

to thee." 

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour 
and a light. 

As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the north- 
ern night. 

And she turn'd — ^her bosom shaken with a sudden 

storm of sighs — 
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel 

eyes, — 



Saying, " I have hid my feelings, fearing they 

should do me wrong;" 
Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin"!" weeping, 

" I have loved thee long." 

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in 

his glowing hands ; 
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden 

sands. 

Love took up the haqj of Life, and smote on all 

the chords with might ; 
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in 

music out of sight. 

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the 
copses ring. 

And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the ful- 
ness of the spring. 

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the 

stately ships, 
And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of 

the lips. 

my cousin, shallow-hearted ! O my Amy, mine 

no more ! 
Oh the dreary, dreary moorland ! Oh the barren. 

barren shore ! 

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs 
have sung. 

Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrew- 
ish tongue ! 

Is it well to wish thee happy? — having known 

me — to decline 
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart 

than mine ! 

Yet it shall be : thou shalt lower to his level day 
by day, 

What is fine within thee growing coarse to sym- 
pathise with clay. 

As the husband is, the wife is : thou art mated 

with a clown. 
And the grossness of his nature will have weight 

to drag thee down. 

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have 

spent its novel force, 
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than 

his horse. 

What is this"! his eyes are heavy : think not they 

are glazed with wine. 
Go to him — it is thy duty : kiss him : take his 

hand in thine. 

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is over- 
wrought : 

Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with 
thy lighter thought. 

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to 

understand — 
Better thou wert dead before me, though I slew 

thee with my hand ! 

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the 
heart's disgrace, 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



447 



Roll'd in one another's arms, and silent in a last 
embrace. 

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the 

strength of youth ! 
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the 

living truth ! 

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest 
nature's rule ! 

Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitcn'd fore- 
head of the fool I 

Well — 'tis well that I should bluster! — Hadst 

thou less unworthy proved — 
Would to God — for I had loved thee more than 

ever wife was loved. 

Am I mad. that I should cherish that which bears 

but bitter fruit ? 
I will pluck it from my bosom, though my heart 

be at the root. 

Never, though my mortal summers to such length 
of years should come 

As the mauy-winter'd crow that leads the clang- 
ing rookery home. 

Where is comfort 1 in division of the records of 

the mind ? 
Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I 

knew her, kind ? 

I remember one that perish'd : sweetly did she 

speak and move : 
Such a one do I remember, who to look at was to 

love. 

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the 

love she bore 1 
No — she never loved me truly : love is love for 

evermore. 

Comfort 1 comfort scorn 'd of devils ! this is truth 

the poet sings. 
That a sorrow's crovi'n of sorrow is remembering 

happier things. 

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy 

heart be put to proof, 
In the dead, unhappy night, and when the rain 

is on the roof. 

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art 
staring at the wall, 

When the dying night-lamp flickers, and the sha- 
dows rise and fall. 

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to 

his drunken sleep. 
To thy widow'd marriage-pillows, to the tears 

that thou wilt weep. 

Thou shall hear the "Never, never," whispered 

by phantom years. 
And a song from out the distance in the ringing 

of thine ears ; 

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kind- 
ness on thy pain. 

Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow: get thee to 
thy rest again. 



Nay, but Nature brings thee solace ; for a tender 

voice will cry, 
'Tis a purer life than thine : a lip to drain thy 

trouble dry. 

Baby lips will laugh me down ; my latest rival 

brings thee rest. 
Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the 

mother's breast. 

Oh, the child, too, clothes the father with a dear- 

ness not his due. 
Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy of 

the two. 

Oh, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty 

part, 
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a 

daughter's heart. 

" They were dangerous guides, the feelings — she 

herself was not exempt — 
Truly, she herself had suffcr'd" — Perish in thy 

self-contempt ! 

Overlive it — lower yet — be happy ! wherefore 

should I care 1 
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by 

despair. 

What is that which I should turn to, lighting 

upon days like these 1 
Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to 

golden keys. 

Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the mar- 
kets overflow. 

I have but an angry fancy : what is that which I 
should do '. 

I had been content to perish, falling on the foe- 
man's ground, 

V/hen the ranks are roll'd in vapour, and the 
winds are laid with sound. 

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that 

honour feels. 
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each 

other's heels. 

Can I but re-live in sadness ? I will turn that 

earlier page. 
Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous 

mother-age ! 

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before 

the strife. 
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult 

of my life ; 

Yearning for the large excitement that the com- 
ing years would yield. 

Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his 
father's field, 

And at night along the dusky highway near and 

nearer drawn, 
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a 

dreary dawn ; 

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before 
him then, 



448 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



Underneath the light he looks at, in among the 
throngs of men ; 

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping 

something new: 
That which they have done but earnest of the 

things that they shall do : 

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could 

see, 
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder 

that would be ; 

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of 

magic sails. 
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with 

costly bales : 

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there 

■ rain'd a ghastly dew 
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the 
central blue ; 

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south- 
wind rushing warm. 

With the standards of the peoples plunging through 
the thunder-storm; 

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the 

battle-flags were furl'd 
In the parliament of man, the federation of the 

world. 

There the common sense of most shall hold a 
fretful realm in awe. 

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in uni- 
versal law. 

So I triumph'd, ere my passion sweeping through 

me left me dry, 
Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with 

the jaundiced eye ; 

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are 

out of joint, 
Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on 

from point to point : 

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping 
nigher. 

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly- 
dying fire. 

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing 

purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the 

process of the suns. 

What is that to him that reaps not han'est of his 

youthful joys. 
Though the deep heart of existence beat for ever 

like a boy's 1 

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I lin- 
ger on the shore. 

And the individual withers, and the world is more 
and more. 

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he 
bears a laden breast, 

Full of sad experience, moving toward the still- 
ness of his rest. 



Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on 

the bugle-horn, 
They to whom my foolish passion were a target 
for their scorn : 

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a 

moukler'd string? 
I am shamed through all my nature to have loved 

so slight a thing. 

Weakness to be wroth with weakness ! woman's 

pleasure, woman's pain — 
Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a 

shallower brain : 

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, 

match'd with mine. 
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water 

unto wine — 

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, 

for some retreat 
Deep in yonder shining orient, where my life 

began to beat ; 

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil- 

starr'd ; 
I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's 

ward. 

Or to burst all links of habit — there to wander far 

away, 
On from island unto island at the gateways of the 

day. 

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and 

happy skies, 
Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, 

knots of Paradise. 

Never comes the trader, never floats an European 

flag, 
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, droops the 

trailer from the crag ; 

Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the 

heavy-fruiti'd tree — 
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres 

of sea. 

There methinks would be enjoyment more than 

in this march of mind, 
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts 

that shake mankind. 

There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have 

scope and breathing-space ; 
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my 

dusky race. 

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and 

they shall run, 
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their 

lances in the sun ; 

Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rain- 
bows of the brooks. 

Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable 
books — 

Fool, again the dream, the fancy ! but I know my 
words are wild, 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



449 



But I count the gray barbarian lower than the 
Christian child. 

/, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our 

glorious gains, 
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast 

with lower pains ! 

Mated with a squalid savage — what to me were 

sun or clime ? 
I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of 

time — 

I that rather held it better men should perish one 

by one, 
Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's 

moon in Aijalon! 

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, for- 
ward let us range; 

Let the peoples spin for ever down the ringing 
grooves of change. 

Through the shadow of the world we sweep into 

the younger day : 
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of 

Cathay. 

Mother-Age, (for mine I knew not,) help me as 
when life begun : 

Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the light- 
nings, weigh the sun — 

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not 

set; 
Ancient founts of inspiration well through all my 

fancy yet. 

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to 

Locksley Hall ! 
Now for me the woods may wither, now for me 

the roof-tree fall. 

Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over 

heath and holt. 
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a 

thunder-bolt. 

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or 

fire or snow ; 
For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and 

I go. 



GODIVA. 

I WAITED for the train at Coventry ; 
I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, 
To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped 
The city's ancient legend into this : — 

Not only we, the latest seed of Time, 
New men, that in the flying of a wheel 
Cry down the past; not only we, that prate 
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well 
And loathed to see them overtax'd ; but she 
Did more, and underwent, and overcame, 
The woman of a thousand summers back, 
Godiva, wife to that grim carl who ruled 
In Coventry : for when he laid a tax 
Upon his town, and all the mothers brought 
Their children, clamourincr, " If we pay, we starve ;" 
57 



She sought her lord, and found him, whom he strode 

About the hall, among his dogs, alone, 

His beard a foot before him, and his hair 

A yard behind. She told him of their tears, 

And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax, they starve." 

Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed, 

" You would not let your little finger ache 

For such as fheseP" — " But I would die," said she. 

He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul : 

Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear, 

"Oh ay, ay, ay, you talk!" — "Alas!" she said, 

"But prove me what it is I would not do." 

And from a heart, as rough as Esau's hand, 

He answer'd, " Ride you naked through the town, 

And I repeal it;" and nodding, as in scorn. 

He parted, with great strides among his dogs ! 

So left alone, the passions of her mind. 
As winds from all the compass shift and blow, 
Made war upon each other for an hour, 
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth. 
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all 
The hard condition ; but that she would loose 
The people, therefore, as they loved her well. 
From then till noon no foot should pace the street, 
No eye look down, she passing, Imt that all 
Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd. 

Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there 
Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt. 
The grim earl's gift ; but ever at a breath 
She linger'd, looking like a summer moon 
Half-dipt in cloud : anon she shook her head, 
And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee; 
Unclad herself in haste ; adown the stair 
Stole on ; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid 
From pillar unto pillar, until she reaeh'd 
The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt 
In purple blazon'd with armorial gold. 

Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity : 
The deep air listen'd round her as she rode. 
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. 
The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spout 
Had cunning eyes to see : the barking cur 
Made her cheek flame : her palfrey's footfall shot 
Light horrors through her pulses : the blind walls 
Were full of chinks and holes ; and overhead 
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she 
Not less through all bore up, till, last, she saw 
The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the field 
Gleam through the Gothic archways in the wall. 

Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity: 
And one low churl, compact of thankless earth, 
The fatal byword of all years to come. 
Boring a little auger-hole in fear, 
Peep'd — but his eyes, before they had their will, 
Were shrivell'd into darkness in his head. 
And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait 
On noble deeds, cancell'd a sense misused ; 
And she, that knew not, pass'd : and all at once, 
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless 

noon 
Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred towers, 
One after one : but even then she gain'd 
Her bower; whence re-issuing, robed and crown'd, 
To meet her lord, she took the tax away. 
And built herself an everlasting name. 
2p2 



450 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN 
NIGHTS. 

When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free 

In the silken sail of infancy, 

The tide of time flow'd hack with me, 

The forward-flowing- tide of time ; 
And many a sheeny summer-morn, 
Adown the Tigris I was borne, 
By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold, 
High-wall'd gardens green and old; 
True Mussulman was I and sworn, 

For it was in the golden prime 
Of good Ilaroun Alraschid : 

Anight my shallop, rustling through 
The low and bloomed foliage, drove 
The fragrant, glistening deeps, and clove 
The citron-shadows in the blue : 
By garden porches on the brim, 
The costly doors flung open wide, 
Gold glittering through lamplight dim. 
And broider'd sophas on each side : 

In sooth it was a goodly time, 

For it was in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

Often, where clear-stemm'd platans guard 

The outlet, did I turn away 

The boat-head down a broad canal 

From the main river sluiced, where all 

The sloping of the moon-lit sward 

Was damask-work, and deep inlay 

Of braided blooms unmown, which crept 

Adown to where the waters slept. 

A goodly place, a goodly time, 

For it was in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid ! 

A motion from the river won 
Kidged the smooth level, bearing on 
My shallop through the star-strown calm. 
Until another night in night 
I enter'd, from the clearer light, 
Imbowerd vaults of pillar'd palm. 
Imprisoning sweets, which, as they clomb 
Heavenward, were stay'd beneath the dome 

Of hollow boughs. — A goodly time, 

For it was in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid ! 

Still onward ; and the clear canal 
Is rounded to as clear a lake. 
From the green rivage many a fall 
Of diamond rillets musical, 
Through little crystal arches low 
Down from the central fountain's flow 
Fall'n silver-chiming, seem'd to shake 
The sparkling flints beneath the prow. 

A goodly place, a goodly time, 

For it was in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid ! 

Above through many a bowery turn 
A walk with vary-colour'd shells 
Wander'd engrain'd. On either side 
All round about the fragrant marge. 



From fluted vase, and brazen urn 
In order, eastern flowers large. 
Some dropping low their crimson bells 
Half-closed, and others studded wide 
With disks and tiars, fed the time 
With odour in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

Far off, and where the lemon-grove 
In closest coverture upsprung. 
The living airs of middle night 
Died round the bulbul as he sung ; 
Not he : but something which possess'd 
The darkness of the world, delight, 
Life, anguish, death, immortal love. 
Ceasing not, mingled, unrepress'd, 
Apart from place, withholding time, 
But flattering the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

Black the garden-bowers and grots 
Slumber'd : the solemn palms were ranged 
Above, unwoo'd of summer wind: 
A sudden splendour from behind 
Flush'd all the leaves with rich gold-green. 
And, flowing rapidly between 
Their interspaces, counterchanged 
The level lake with diamond-plots 
Of dark and bright. A lovely time. 
For it was in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid ! 

Dark-blue the deep sphere overhead, 
Distinct with vivid stars inlaid, 
Grew darker from that under-flame: 
So, leaping lightly from the boat, 
With silver anchor left afloat. 
In marvel whence that glory came 
Upon me, as in sleep I sank 
In cool soft turf upon the bank. 

Entranced with that place and time, 
So worthy of the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

Thence through the garden I was drawn — 

A realm of pleasance, many a mound, 

And many a shadow-chequer'd lawn 

Full of the city's stilly sound ; 

And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round 

The stately cedar, tamarisks. 

Thick roseries of scented thorn, 

Tall orient shrubs, and obelisks 
Graven with emblems of the time, 
In honour of the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

With dazed vision unawares 
From the long valley's latticed shade 
Emerged, I came upon the great 
Pavilion of the Caliphat. 
Right to the carven cedarn doors. 
Flung inward over spangled floors, 
Broad-based flights of marbled stair 
Ran up with golden balustrade. 
After the fashion of the time, 
And humour of the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



451 



The fourscore windows all alight 
As with the quintessence of flame, 
A million tapers flaring bright 
From twisted silvers, look'd to shame 
The hollow-vaulted dark, and stream'd 
Upon the mooned domes aloof 
In inmost Bagdat, till there seem'd 
Hundreds of crescents on the roof 

Of night new-risen, that marvellous time, 

To celebrate the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

Then stolel up, and trancedly 

Gazed on the Persian girl alone, 

Serene with argent-lidded eyes 

Amorous, and lashes like to rays 

Of darkness, and a brow of pearl 

Tress'd with redolent ebony. 

In many a dark delicious curl, 

Flowing beneath her rose-hued zone; 
The sweetest lady of the time. 
Well worthy of the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

Six columns, three on either side, 

Pure silver, underpropp'd a rich 

Throne of the massive ore, from which 

Down-droop'd, in many a floating fold, 

Engarlanded and diaper'd 

With inwrought flowers, a cloth of gold. 

Thereon, his deep eye, laughter-stirr'd, 

With merriment of kingly pride, 
Sole star of all that place and time, 
I saw him — in his golden prime, 
The good Haroun Alraschid ! 



MARIANA. 

With blackest moss the flower-plots 
Were thickly crusted, one and all. 
The rusted nails fell from the knots 

That held the peach to the garden-wall. 
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange, 
Unlifted was the clinking latch, 
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch 
Upon the lonely moated grange. 

She only said " My life is dreary, 

He Cometh not," she said ; 

She said " I am aweary, aweary ; 

I would that I were dead !" 

Her tears fell with the dews at even ; 

Her tears fell ere the dews were dried ; 
She could not look on the sweet heaven, 

Either at morn or eventide. 
After the flitting of the bats, 

When thickest dark did trance the sky, 
She drew her casement-curtain by. 
And glanced athwart the glooming flats. 
She only said "The night is dreary, 

He cometh not," she said ; 

She said " I am aweary, aweary, 

I would that I were dead !" 



Upon the middle of the night, 

Waking she heard the night-fowl crow : 
The cock sung out an hour ere light : 

From the dark fen the oxen's low 
Came to her : without hope of change, 
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn. 
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn 
About the lonely moated grange. 

She only said, " The day is dreary, 

He cometh not," she said ; 

She said, " I am aweary, aweary, 

I would that I were dead !" 

About a stone-cast from the wall 

A sluice with blacken'd waters slept, 
And o'er it many, round and small, 

The cluster'd marish-mosses crept. 
Hard by a poplar shook alway. 
All silver-green with gnarled bark, 
For leagues no other tree did dark 
The level waste, the rounding gray. 
She only said, " My life is dreary. 

He cometh not," she said ; 

She said, " I am aweary, aweary, 

I would that I were dead !" 

And ever when the moon was low, 

And the shrill winds were up and away. 
In the white curtain, to and fro, 

She saw the gusty shadow sway. 
But when the moon was very low, 

And wild winds bound within their cell. 
The shadow of the poplar fell 
Upon her bed, across her brow. 

She only said, " The night is dreary. 

He cometh not," she said ; 

She said, " I am aweary, aweary, 

I would that I were dead I" 

All day within the dreamy house, 

The doors upon their hinges creak'd. 
The blue fly sung i' the pane ; the mouse 

Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd. 
Or from the crevice peer'd about. 

Old faces glimmer'd through the doors. 
Old footsteps trod the upper floors. 
Old voices call'd her from without. 

She only said, " My life is dreary. 

He cometh not," she said ; 

She said, " I am aweary, aweary, 

I would that I were dead !" 

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof, 

The slow clock ticking, and the sound 
Which to the wooing wind aloof 

The poplar made, did all confound 

Her sense ; but most she loath'd the hour 

When the thick-moted sunbeam lay 

Athwart the chambers, and the day 

Was sloping toward his western bower. 

Then, said she, " I am very dreary. 

He will not come," she said ; 

She wept, " I am aweary, aweary. 

Oh God, that I were dead !" 



452 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



SIR GALAHAD. 

Mr good blade carves the casques of men, 

My tough lance thrusteth sure, 
My strength is as the strength of ten, 

Because my heart is pure. 
The shattering t-umpet shrilleth high, 

The hard brands shiver on the steel, 
The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly, 

The horse and rider reel : 
They reel, they roll in clanging lists. 

And when the tide of combat stands. 
Perfume and flowers fall in showers, 

That lightly rain from ladies' hands. 

How sweet are looks that ladies bend 

On whom their favours fall ! 
For them I battle till the end. 

To save from shame and thrall : 
But all my heart is ilrawn above, 

My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine: 
I never felt the kiss of love. 

Nor maiden's hand in mine. 
More bounteous aspects on me beam, 

Me mightier transports move and thrill ; 
So keep I fair through faith and prayer 

A virgin heart in work and will. 

When down the stormy crescent goes, 

A light before me swims. 
Between dark stems the forest glows, 

I hear a noiee of hymns; 
Then by some secret shrine I ride ; 

I hear a voice, but none are there ; 
The stalls are void, the doors are wide. 

The tapers burning fair. 
Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth. 

The silver vessels sparkle clean, 
The shrill bell rings, the censer swings. 

And solemn cliants resound between. 

Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres 

I find a magic bark ; 
I leap on board : no helmsman steers : 

I float till all is dark. 
A gentle sound, an awful litrht ! 

Three angels bear the holy grail : 
With folded feet, in stoles of white, 

On sleeping wings they sail. 
Ah, blessed vision ! blood of God ! 

My spirit beats her mortal bars. 
As down dark tides the glory slides. 

And, star-like, mingles with the stars. 

When on my goodly charger borne 

Through dreaming towns I go. 
The cock crows ere the Christmas morn, 

The streets are dumb with snow. 
The tempest crackles on the leads. 

And, ringing, spins from brand and mail; 
But o'er the dark a glory spreads. 

And gilds the driving hail. 
I leave the plain, I climb the height 

No branchy thicket shelter yields ; 
But blessed forms in whistling storms 

Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields. 



A maiden knight — to me is given 

Such hope, I know not fear ; 
I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven 

That often meet me here. 
I muse on joy that will not cease, 

Pure spaces clothed in living beams, 
Pure lilies of eternal peace, 

Whose odours haunt my dreams ; 
And, stricken by an angel's hand, 

This mortal armour that I wear, 
This weight and size, this heart and eyes, 

Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air. 

The clouds are broken in the sky, 

And through the mountain-walls 
A rolling organ-harmony 

Swells up, and shakes and falls. 
Then move the trees, the copses nod, 

Wings flutter, voices hover clear: 
" O just and faithful knight of God ! 

Ride on ! the prize is near." 
So pass I hostel, hall, and grange ; 

By bridge and ford, by park and pale, 
All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide, 

Until I find the holy grail. 



THE BALLAD OF ORIANA. 

My heart is wasted with my wo, 

Oriana. 
There is no rest for me below, 

Oriana. 
When the long dun wolds are ribb'd with snow. 
And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow, 

Oriana, 
Alone I wander to and fro, 

Oriana. 

Ere the light on dark was growing, 

Oriana, 
At midnight the cock was crowing, 

Oriana: 
Winds were blowing, waters flowing. 
We heard the steeds to battle going, 

Oriana ; 
Aloud the hollow bugle blowing, 

Oriana. 

In the yew-wood black as night, 

Oriana, 
Ere I rode into the fight, 

Oriana, 
While blissful tears blinded my sight 
By star-shine and by moonlight, 

Oriana, 
I to thee my troth did plight, 

Oriana. 

She stood upon the castle wall, 

Oriana : 
She watch'd my crest among them all, 

Oriana : 
She saw me fight, she heard mc call. 
When forth there stept a foeman tall, 

Oriana, 
Atween me and the castle wall, 

Oriana. 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



453 



The bitter arrow went aside, 

Oriana: 
The false, false arrow went aside, 

Oriana : 
The damned arrow glanced aside. 
And pierced thy heart, my love, my bride, 

Oriana ! 
Thy heart, my life, my love, my bride, 

Oriana ! 

Oh ! narrow, narrow was the space, 

Oriana. 
Loud, loud rung out the bugle's brays, 

Oriana. 
Oh ! deathful stabs were dealt apace. 
The battle deepen'd in its place, 

Oriana ; 
But I was down upon my face, 

Oriana. 

They should have stabb'd me where I lay, 

Oriana ! 
How could I rise and come away, 

Oriana 1 
How could I look upon the day ? 
They should have stabb'd me where I lay, 

Oriana — 
They should have trod me into clay, 

Oriana. 

Oh ! breaking heart that will not break, 

Oriana ; 
Oh ! pale, pale face so sweet and meek, 

Oriana. 
Thou smilest, but thou dost not speak. 
And then the tears run down my cheek, 

Oriana : 
What wantest thou 1 whom dost thou seek, 

Oriana ] 

I cry aloud : none hear my cries, 

Oriana. 
Thou comest atween me and the skies, 

Oriana. 
I feel the tears of blood arise 
L'p from my heart unto my eyes, 

Oriana. 
Within thy heart my arrow lies, 

Oriana. 

O cursed hand ! O cursed blow ! 
Oriana ! 

happy thou that liest low, 

Oriana ! 
All night the silence seems to flow 
Beside me in my utter wo, 

Oriana. 
A weary, weary way I go, 

Oriana. 

When Norland winds pipe down the sea 
Oriana, 

1 walk, I dare not think of thee, 

Oriana. 
Thou liest beneath the greenwood tree, 
I dare not die and come to thee, 

Oriana. 
I hear the roaring of the sea, 

Oriana. 



THE TALKING OAK. 

0:»fCE more the gate behind me falls ; 

Once more before my face 
I see the moulder'd Abliey-walls, 

That stand within the chace. 

Beyond the lodge the city lies, 

Beneath its drift of smoke ; 
And, ah ! with what delighted eyes 

I turn to yonder oak. 

For when my passion first began. 
Ere that, which in me burn'd, 

The love, that makes ine thrice a man, 
Could hope itself returned ; 

To yonder oak within the field 

I spoke without restraint. 
And with a larger faith appeal'd 

Than papist unto saint. 

For oft I talk'd with him apart 

And told him of my choice. 
Until he plagiarized a heart, 

And answer'd with a voice. 

Though what he whisper'd under Heaven 
None else could understand ; 

I found him garrulously given, 
A babbler in the land. 

But since I heard him make reply 

Is many a weary hour ; 
'Twcre well to question him, and try 

If yet he keeps the power. 

Hail, hidden to the knees in fern. 
Broad oak of Sumner-chace, 

Whose topmost branches can discern 
The roofs of Sumner-place ! 

Say thou, whereon I carved her name. 

If ever maid or spouse. 
As fair as my Olivia, came 

To rest beneath thy boughs. — 

" Walter, I have shelter'd here 

Whatever maiden grace 
The good old summers, year by year, 

Made ripe in Sumner-chace ; 

" Old summers, when the monk was fat. 
And, issuing shorn and sleek, 

Would twist his girdle tight, and pat 
The girls upon the cheek ; 

■'Ere yet, in scorn of Peter' s-pence. 
And number'd bead, and shrift, 

Bluff' Harry broke into the spence. 
And turn'd the cowls adrift : 

" And I have seen some score of those 
Fresh faces, that would thrive 

When his man-minded olfset rose 
To chase the deer at five ; 

" And all that from the town would stroll, 
Till that wild wind made work 

In which the gloomy brewer's soul 
Went by me, like a stork : 



454 ALFRED TENNYSON. 


" The slight she-slips of loyal blood, 
And others, passing praise, 

Strait-laced, but all-too-full in bud 
For puritanic stays : 


" She left the novel half-uncut 
Upon the rosewood shelf,- 

She left the new piano shut : 
She could not please herself. 


" And I have shadow'd many a group 
Of beauties, that were born 

In teacup-times of hood and hoop, 
Or while the patch was worn ; 


" Then ran she, gamesome as the colt, 

And livelier than a lark 
She sent her voice through all the holt 

Before her, and the park. 


" And leg and arm with love-knots gay, 
About me leap'd and laugh'd 

The modish Cupid of the day, 
And shrill'd his tinsel shaft. 


" A light wind chased her on the wing, 
And in the chase grew wild, 

As close as might be would he cling 
About the darling child : 


" I swear (and else may insects prick 

Each leaf into a gall) 
This girl, for whom your heart is sick, 

Is three times worth them all ; 


"But Hght as any wind that blows 

So fleetly did she stir. 
The flower, she touch'd on, dipt and rose, 

And turn'd to look at her. 


" For those and their's, by Nature's law 

Have faded long ago ; 
But in these latter springs I saw 

Your own Olivia blow, 


" And here she came, and round me play'd, 

And sang to me the whole 
Of those three stanzas that you made 

About my ' giant bole ;' 


"From when she gamboll'd on the greens, 

A baby-germ, to when 
The maiden blossoms of her teens 

Could number five from ten. 


" And in a fit of frolic mirth 
She strove to span my waist ; 

Alas, I was so broad of girth, 
I could not be embraced. 


" I swear by leaf, and wind, and rain 
(And hear me with thine ears,) 

That, though I circle in the grain 
Five hundred rings of years — 


"I wish'd myself the fair young beech 
That here lieside me stands, 

That round me, clasping each in each. 
She might have lock'd her hands. 


" Yet, since I first could cast a shade, 

Did never creature pass 
So slightly, musically made, 

So light upon the grass : 


"Yet seem'd the pressure thrice as sweet 

As woodbine's fragile hold, 
Or when I feel about my feet 

The berried briony fold." 


" For as to fairies, that will flit 
To make the greensward fresh, 

I hold them exquisitely knit, 
But far too spare of flesh." 


Oh muffle round thy knees with fern, 
And shadow Sumner-chace ! 

Long may thy topmost branch discern 
The roofs of Sumner-place ! 


Oh, hide thy knotted knees in fern, 

And overlook the chace; 
And from thy topmost branch discern 

The roofs of Sumner-place. 


But tell me, did she read the name 

I carved with many vows 
W^hen last with throbbing heart I came 

To rest beneath thy boughs ] 


But thou, whereon I carved her name, 
That oU hast heard my vows. 

Declare when last Olivia came 
To sport beneath thy boughs. 


" Oh yes, she wander'd round and round 
These knotted knees of mine, 

And found, and kiss'd the name she found. 
And sweetly murmur'd thine. 


" Oh yesterday, you know, the fair 
Was holden at the town ; 

Her fatiier left his good arm-chair, 
And rode his hunter down. 


"A tear-drop trembled from its source, 
And down my surface crept. 

My sense of touch is something coarse, 
But I believe she wept. 


" And with him Albert came on his, 
I look'd at him with joy: 

As cowslip unto oxjip is, 
So seems she to the boy. 


"Then flush'd her cheek whh rosy light, 
She glanced across the plain ; 

But not a creature was in sight: 
She kiss'd me once again. 


" An hour had past — and, sitting straight, 
Within the low-wheel'd chaise. 

Her mother trundled to the gate 
Behind the dappled grays. 


" Her kisses were so close and kind 
That, trust me on my word. 

Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind. 
But yet my sap was stirr'd : 


" But, as for her, she stay'd at home, 
And ori the roof she went, 

And down the way you use to come 
She look'd with discontent. 


« And even into my inmost ring 

A pleasure I discern'd, 
Like those blind motions of the spring, 

That show the year is turn'd. 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 455 


" Thrice-happy he that may caress 
The ringlet's waving balm — 

The cushions of whose touch may press 
The maiden's tender palm. 


" I shook him down because he was 

The finest on the tree. 
He lies beside thee on the grass — 

Oh kiss him once for me. 


" I, rooted here among the groves, 

But languidly adjust 
My vapid vegetable loves 

With anthers and with dust: 


" Oh kiss him twice and thrice for me, 

That have no lips to kiss. 
For never yet was oak on lea 

Shall grow so fair as this." 


" For ah ! the dryad-days were brief 

Whereof the poets talk, 
When that, which breathes within the leaf, 

Could slip its bark and walk. 


Step deeper yet in herb and fern. 
Look further through the chace. 

Spread upward till thy boughs discern 
The front of Sumner-place. 


« But could I, as in times foregone, 
From spray, and branch, and stem, 

Have suck'd and gather'd into one 
The life that spreads in them, 


This fruit of thine by Love is blest 

That but a moment lay 
Where fairer fruit of love may rest 

Some happy future day. 


" She had not found me so remiss ; 

But, lightly issuing through, 
I would have paid her kiss for kiss 

With usury tiiereto." 


I kiss it twice, I kiss it thrice. 
The warmth it thence shall win 

To riper life may magnetise 
The baby-oak within. 


Oh flourish high, with leafy towers. 

And overlook the lea. 
Pursue thy loves among the bowers. 

But leave thou mine to me. 


But thou, while kingdoms overset, 
Or lapse from hand to hand, 

Thy leaf shall never fail, nor yet 
Thine acorn in the land. 


Oh flourish, hidden deep in fern, 
Old oak, I love thee well ; 

A thousand thanks for what I learn 
And what remains to tell. 


May never saw dismember thee, 
Nor wielded axe disjoint, 

That art the fairest-spoken tree 
From here to Lizard-point. 


"'Tis little more: the day was warm, 
At last, tired out with play. 

She sank her head upon her arm, 
And at my feet she lay. 


Oh rock upon thy towery top 
All throats that gurgle sweet ! 

All starry culmination drop 
Balm-dews to bathe thy feet ! 


« Her eyelids dropp'd their silken eaves : 

I breathed upon her eyes 
Through all the summer of my leaves 

A welcome mix'd with sighs. 


All grass of silky feather grow — 
And while he sinks or swells 

The full south-breeze around thee blow 
The sound of minster bells. 


"I took the swarming sound of life — 
The music from the town — 

The whispers of the drum and fife, 
And lull'd them in my own. 


The fat earth feed thy branchy root. 
That under deeply strikes ! 

The northern morning o'er thee shoot. 
High up, in silver spikes ! 


"Sometimes I let a sunbeam slip 
To light her shaded eye ; 

A second flvitter'd round her lip 
Like a golden butterfly ; 


Nor ever lightning char thy grain, 

But, rolling as in sleep. 
Low thunders bring the mellow rain. 

That makes thee broad and deep ! 


" A third would glimmer on her neck 
To make the necklace shine ; 

Another slid, a sunny fleck. 
From head to ankle fine. 


And hear me swear a solemn oath, 

That only by thy side 
Will I to Olive plight my troth, 

And gain her for my bride. ' 


"Then close and dark my arms I spread. 
And shadow'd all her rest — 

Dropt dews upon her golden head, 
An acorn in her breast. 


And when my marriage-morn may fall. 

She, dri^ad-like, shall wear 
Alternate leaf and acorn-ball 

In wreath about her hair. 


"But in a pet she started up. 
And pluck'd it out, and drew 

My little oakling from the cup, 
And flung him in the dew. 


And I will work in prose and rhyme. 
And praise thee more in both 

Than bard has honour'd beech or lime. 
Or that Thessalian growth. 


" And yet it was a g;raceful gift — 

I felt a pang within 
As when I see tlie woodman lift 

His axe to slay my kin. 


In which the swarthy ring-dove sat 
And mystic sentence spoke ; 

And more than England honours that, 
Thy famous brother-oak. 



--^^■^ — _ ^^- 

456 ALFRED TENNYSON. 


Wherein the younger Charles abode 


There the river eddy whirls. 


Till all the paths were dim, 


And there the surly village-churls, 


And far below the Roundhead rode, 


And the red cloaks of market-girls. 


And humm'd a surly hymn. 


Pass onward from Shalott. 


- 


Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, 
An abbot on an ambling pad. 






Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad, 
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad, 


THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 




Goes by to tower'd Camelot ; 


PART I. 


And sometimes through the mirror blue 


Ojf either side the river lie 


The knights come riding two and two: 


Long fields of barley and of rye, 


She hath no loyal knight and true. 


That clothe the wold and meet the sky ; 


The Lady" of Shalott. 


And through the field the road runs by 


But in her web she still delights 


To many-tower'd Camelot; 


To weave the mirror's magic sights. 


And up and down the people go, 


For often through the silent nights 

A funeral, with plumes and lights, 

And music, went to Camelot: 


Gazing where the lilies blow 


Round an island there below, 


The island of Shalott, 


Or when the moon was overhead. 


Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 
Little breezes dusk and shiver 
Through the wave that runs for ever 


Came two young lovers lately wed ; 
" I am half-sick of shadows," said 
The Lady of Shalott. 


By the island in the river 


PART III, 


Flowing down to Camelot. 




Four gray walls, and four gray towers. 
Overlook a space of flowers. 
And the silent isle imbowers 


A BOW-SHOT from her bower-eaves, 


He rode between the barley sheaves. 


The sun came dazzling through the leaves 


The Lady of Shalott. 


And flamed upon the brazen greaves 


Of bold Sir Lancelot. 


By the margin, willow-veil'd, 


A redcross knight for ever kneel'd 


Slide the heavy barges trail'd 


To a lady in his shield, j 


By slow horses ; and unhail'd 


That sparkled on the yellow field, | 


The shallop fiitteth silken-sail'd. 


Beside remote Shalott. 


Skimming down to Camelot : 
But who hath seen her wave her hand? 


The gemmy bridle glittcr'd free. 

Like to some branch of stars we see ■* 


Or at the casement seen her stand 1 


Or is she known in all the land, 


Hung in the golden galaxy. 


The Lady of Shalott 1 


The bridle-bells rang merrily. 

As he rode down to Camelot, 


Only reapers, reaping early 


And from this blazon'd baldric slung 


In among the bearded barley, 


A mighty silver bugle hung, 


Hear a song that echoes cheerly 


And as he rode his armour rung, 


From the river winding clearly. 


Beside remote Shalott. 


Down to tower'd Camelot : 


All in the blue unclouded weather 


And by the moon the reaper weary, 


Thick-iewell'd shone the saddle-leather, 1 


Piling sheaves in uplands airy, 


J 7 j 

The helmet and the helmct-fi^ather i 


Listening, whispers " 'Tis the fairy 
Lady of Shalott." 


Burn'd like one burning flame together. 
As he rode down to Camelot. 


paut it. 


As often through the purple night, 




Below the starry clusters bright, 
Some bearded meteor, trailing light, 


There she weaves by night and day 


A magic web with colours gay. 


Moves over still Shalott. 


She has heard a whisper say, 




A curse is on her if she stay 


His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd ; 


To look down to Camelot. 


On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode ; 


She knows not what the curse may be, 


From underneath his helmet flow'd 


And so she weaveth steadily. 


His coal-l)lack curls as on he rode. 


And little other care hath she. 


As he rode down to Camelot. 


The Lady of Shalott. 


From the hank and from the river 




He flash'd into the crystal mirror, 


And moving through a mirror clear 
That hangs before her all the year, 


" Tirra lirra," by the river 
Sang Sir Lancelot. 


Shadows of the world appear. 




There she sees the highway near 


She left the web, she left the loom. 


Winding down to Camelot : 


She made three paces through the room, 

11 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



457 



She saw the water-lily bloom, 
She saw the helmet and the plume, 

She looked down to Camelot. 
Out flew the web and floated wide ; 
The mirror crack'd from side to side ; 
" The curse is come upon me," cried 

The Lady of Shalott. 

PART IT. 

Ix the stormy east-wind straining, 
The pale-yellow woods were waning, 
The broad stream in his banks complaining. 
Heavily the low sky raining 

Over tower'd Camelot ; 
Down she came and found a boat 
Beneath a willow left afloat, 
And round about the prow she wrote 

The Lady of Shalott. 

And down the river's dim expanse — 
Like some bold seer in a trance. 
Seeing all his own mischance — 
With a glassy countenance 

Did she look to Camelot. 
And at the closing of the day 
She loosed the chain, and down she lay ; 
The broad stream bore her far away. 

The Lady of Shalott. 

Lying, robed in snowy white 
That loosely flew to left and right — 
The leaves upon her falling light — 
Through the noises of the night 

She floated down to Camelot : 
And as the boat-head wound along 
The willowy hills and fields among, 
They heard her singing her last song. 

The Lady of Shalott. 

Heard a carol, mournful, boly. 
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, 
Till her blood was frozen slowly, 
And her eyes were darken'd wholly, 

Turn'd to tower'd Camelot ; 
For ere she reach'd upon the tide 
The first house by the water-side, 
Singing in her song she died, 

The Lady of Shalott. 

Under tower of balcony. 
By garden-wall and gallery, 
A gleaming shape she floated by, 
A corse between the houses high, 

Silent into Camelot. 
Out upon the wharfs tbey came, 
Knight and burgher, lord and dame, 
And round the prow they read her name. 

The Lady of Shalott. 

Who is this 1 and what is here 1 
And in the lighted palace near 
Died the sound of royal cheer ; 
And they cross'd themselves for fear, 

All the knights at Camelot : 
But Lancelot mused a little space; 
He said, " She has a lovely face ; 
God ill his mercy lend her grace, 

The Lady of Shalott." 
58 



DORA. 

With farmer Allan at the farm abode 
William and Dora. William was his son, 
And she his niece. He often look'd at them. 
And often thought " I'll make ihem man and 

wife." 
Now Dora felt her uncle's will in all, 
And yearn'd towards William ; but the youth, be- 
cause 
He had been always with her in the house. 
Thought not of Dora. 

Then there came a day 
When Allan call'd his son, and said, " My son, 
I married late; but I would wish to see 
My grandchild on my knees before I die : 
And I have set my heart upon a match. 
Now therefore look to Dora ; she is well 
To look to ; thrifty too beyond her age. 
She is my brother's daughter : he and I 
Had once hard words, and parted, and he died 
In foreign lands ; but for his sake I bred 
His daughter Dora : take her for your wife ; 
For I have wish'd this marriage, night and day. 
For many years." But William answer'd short, 
" I cannot marry Dora ; by my life, 
I will not marry Dora." Then the old man 
Was wroth, and doubled up his hands, and said, 
" You will not, boy ! you dare to answer thus! 
But in my time a father's word was law, 
And so it shall be now for me. Look to't. 
Consider: take a month to think, and give 
An answer to my wish ; or by the Lord 
That made me, you shall pack, and nevermore 
Darken my doors again." And William heard. 
And answer'd something madly ; bit his lips, 
And broke away. The more he look'd at her 
The less he liked her; and his ways were harsh; 
But Dora bore them meekly. Then before 
The month was out he left his father's house. 
And hired himself to work within the fields; 
And half in love, half spite, he woo"d and wed 
A labourer's daughter, Mary Morrison. 

Then, when the bells were ringing, Allan call'd 
His niece and said, " My girl, I love you well ; 
But if you speak with him that was my son, 
Or change a word with her he calls his wife. 
My home is none of yours. My will is law." 
And Dora promised, being meek. She thought, 
" It cannot be ; my uncle's mind will change !" 

And days went on, and there was born a boy 
To William ; then distresses came on him ; 
And day by day he pass'd his father's gate. 
Heart-broken, and his father help'd him not. 
But Dora stored vv'hat little she could save. 
And sent it them by stealth, nor did they know 
Who sent it; till at last a fever seized 
On William, and in harvest time he died. 

Then Dora went to Mary. Mary sat. 
And look'd with tears upon her boy, and thought 
Hard things of Dora. Dora came and said, 
" I have obc3''d my uncle until now. 
And I have sinn'd, for it was all through me 
This evil came on William at the first. 
But, Mary, for the sake of him that's gone, 

2Q 



458 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



And for your sake, the woman that he chose, 

And for this orphan, I ain come to you : 

You know there has not been for these five years 

So full a harvest : let me take the boy, 

And I will set him in my uncle's eye 

Among the wheat; that when his heart is glad 

Of tlie full harvest, he may see the boy. 

And bless him for the sake of him that's gone." 

And Dora took the child and went her way 

Across the wheat, and sat upon a mound 

That was unsown, where many poppies grew. 

Far off the farmer came into the field 

And spied her not; for none of all his men 

Dare tell him Dora waited with the child ; 

And Dora would have risen and gone to him, 

But her heart fail'd her; and the reapers reap'd, 

And the sun fell, and all the land was dark. 

But when the morrow came, she rose and took 
The child once more, and sat upon the mound ; 
And made a little wreath of all the flowers 
That grew about, and tied it round his hat 
To make him pleasing in her uncle's eye. 
Then when the farmer pass'd into the field 
He spied her, and he left his men at work 
And came and said, " Where were you yesterday ? 
Whose child is that 1 What are you doing here !" 
So Dora cast her eyes upon the ground 
And answer'd softly, " This is W' illiam's child !" 
" And did I not," said Allan, "did I not 
Forbid you, Doral" Dora said again, 
" Do with me as you will, but take the child 
And bless him for the sake of him that's gone !" 
And Allan said, " I see it is a trick 
Got up betwixt you and the woman there. 
I must be taught my duty, and by you ! 
You knew my word was law, and yet you dared 
To slight it. Well— for I will take the boy ; 
But go you hence, and never see me more." 

So saying, he took the boy, that cried aloud 
And struggled hard. The wreath of flowers fell 
At Dora's feet. She how'd upon her hands, 
And the boy's cry came to her from the field, 
More and more distant. She bow'd down her head, 
Remembering the day when first slie came, 
And all the things that had been. She bow'd down 
And wept in secret; and the reapers reap'd. 
And the sun fell, and all the land was dark. 

Then Dora went to Mary's house, and stood 
Upon the threshold. Mary saw the boy 
Was not with Dora. She broke out in praise 
To God, that help'd her in her widowhood. 
And Dora said, " My uncle took the boy ; 
But, Mary, let me live and work with you : 
He says that he will never see me more." 
Then answer'd Mary, " This shall never be, 
That thou shouldst take my trouble on thyself: 
And, now I think, he shall not have the boy. 
For he will teach him hardness, and to slight 
His mother ; therefore thou and I will go, 
And T will have my boy, and bring him home ; 
And I will beg of him to take thee back ; 
But if he will not take thee back again, 
Then thou and I will live within one house. 
And work for William's child, until he grows 
Of age to help us." 



So the women kiss'd 
Each other, and set out, and reach'd the farm. 
The door was oir the latch ; they peep'd, and 

saw 
The boy set up betwixt his grandsire's knees, 
Who thrust him in the hollows of his arm. 
And clapp'd him on the hands and on the cheeks, 
Like one that loved him ; and the lad stretch'd out 
And babbled for the golden seal, that hung 
From Allan's watch, and sparkled by the fire. 
Then they came in : but when the boy beheld 
His mother, he cried out to come to her. 
And Allan set him down ; and Mary said: 

" O Father ! — if you let me call you so — 
I never came a-begging for myself. 
Or William, or this child ; but now I come 
For Dora: take her back; she loves you well. 

sir, when William died, he died at peace 
With all men ; for I ask'd him, and he said, 
He could not ever rue his marrying me ; 

1 had been a patient wife : but, sir, he said 
■J'hat he was wrong to cross his father thus. 
'God bless him!' he said, 'and may he never 

know 
The troubles I have gone through !' Then he 

turn'd 
His face and pass'd — unhappy that I am ! 
But now, sir, let me have my boy, for you 
Will make him hard, and he will learn to slight 
His father's memory ; and take Dora back, 
And let all this be as it was before." 

So Mary said, and Dora hid her face 
By Mary. There was silence in the room ; 
And all at once the old man burst in sobs : — 
" I have been to blame — to blame. I have kill'd 

my son. 
I have kill'd him — but I loved him — my dear son. 
May God forgive me ! — I have been to blame. 
Kiss me, my children." 

Then they clung about 
The old man's neck, and kiss'd him many times. 
And all the man was broken with remorse; 
And all his love came back a hundredfold ; 
And for three hours he sobb'd o'er .William's 

child. 
Thinking of William. 

So those four abode 
Within one house together; and as years 
Went forward, Mary took another mate; 
But Dora lived unmarried till her death. 



CIRCUMSTANCE. 

Two children in two neighbour villages 
Playing mad pranks along the heathy leas; 
Two strangers meeting at a festival ; 
Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall ; 
Two lives bound fast in one with golden ease ; 
Two graves grass-green beside a gray church-tower, 
Wash'd with still rains and daisy-blossomed; 
Two children in one hamlet born and bred ; 
So runs the round of life from hour to hour. 



GEORGE DARLEY. 



Mr, Darley is the author of Sylvia or the 
May Queen, a poem devoted to summer and 
the fairies; the Manuscripts of Erdeley; Tho- 
mas a Becket, a tragedy ; Ethelstan, a chroni- 
cle ; and other pieces, narrative, lyrical and 
dramatic. He belongs to a new class of 
writers, of whom we have elsewhere noticed 
Robert Browning, and R. H. Horne. He 
has shown himself to be a true poet, of an origi- 
nal vein of thought, and an affluent imagination. 
In the preface to Ethelstan, he says, " I would 
fain build a cairn, or rude national monument, 
on some eminence of our Poetic Mountain, to 
a few amongst the many heroes of our race, 
sleeping even yet with no memorial there, or 
one hidden beneath the moss of ages. ' Eth- 
elstan' is the second stone, ' Becket' was the 
first, borne thither by me for this homely pyra- 
mid ; to rear it may be above my powers, but 
were it a mere mound of rubbish, it might re- 



main untrampled and unscorned, from the 
sacredness of its purpose." Aside from this 
object, his works would command respect; 
but their beauty is marred by an affected quaint- 
ness, by novel epithets, JTnd occasional ob- 
scurities. His ruggedness of manner, inter- 
rupted by a frequent melody of expression, 
remind us of the old poets, whom he has care- 
fully studied, and well described in one of the 
richest and most idiomatic specimens of recent 
prose, his Critical Essay prefixed to Moxon's 
edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, in which 
he says, " You find tulips growing out of sand- 
banks, pluck Hesperian fruit from crab-trees, 
step from velvet turf upon sharp stubble." 
" No prose or poetry," says a judicious critic 
in Mrdurus, "can be farther from the sonorous 
school of Addison, and nowhere can we find 
rythmical cadences of greater beauty, than 
in some occasional passages of Darley." 



A SCENE FROM ETHELSTAN. 

The Jcinjir in sackcloth at an oaken table in a small Cahi- 
vet. Enter his sister, Edgitha, abbess of Beverley, whoin 
he embraces. 

Efhelsfan. My sister ! my born friend ! 
Why at this hour, [forth, 

When none save night's rough minions venture 
Was thy pale health so bold 1 

Erigllha. Is there no flush 
Bespreads my cheek ] that's health ! new life, my 

brother ! 
Which joy to see thee brings. But out, alas ! 
What change in thee, what mournful change ] 

Etk. Years ! years ! 

Edg. Nay, thou'rt, if not in bloomiest youth's 
spring-tide, 
Yet in its autumn. 

Efh. Autumn is ever sere! 
Youth saddens near its ending, like old age ; 
Or worse, for this hath better life at hand. 

Edg. No ! no ! that is not it, that is not it ! 

Elh. And then bethink thee, Sihtric's widow- 
queen, 
Kings wear not, like the peacocks, feather'd crowns; 
Our goldencst have some iron in them too ! 

Edg. Ah ! wouldst thou take meek sample from 
so many 
Of our wise Saxon kings ; who gave up power 
Without a sigh to those who still sigh'd for it ; 



And changed their glittering robes with russet weeds, 

And turn'd their sceptres into crucifixes, 

And bared their heads of all but tonsured crowns, 

And lived out hermit lives in mossy cells. 

Or died at Rome on saintly pilgrimage': 

Were they not wise ] 

Efh. Wise for themselves they were I 
Edg. Then wherefore not thou for thyself as welH 
Wherefore, in thy loved town of Beverley, 
Under thy patron saint, canonized John, 
As servant dedicate through him to heaven, 
Seek not thy temporal rest and peace eterne 1 
Wherefore withdraw not from the thorny ways 
And unreclaimable wilderness of this world. 
To the smooth-marbled aisle and cloister trim 
Beside us ; to these gardens paced by forms 
Bland-whispering as their trees, and moving round 
Each shrub they tend, softly as its own shadow 1 
Wherefore retire thee not, wouldst thou enjoy 
Calm raptures of ecstatic contemplation, 
To yon elm-pillar'd avenue, sky roof'd, 
That leads from Minster Church to Monastery, 
Both by thyself embcautified, as if 
But for thyself] Nothing disturbeth there 
Save the grand hum of the organ heard within, 
Or murmurnig chorus that with faint low chime 
Tremble to lift their voices up o'erhigh 
Even in God's praises! — Here find happiness, 
Here make thy quietary ! as thy sister, [she. 

Once queen, hath done. Wherefore not, thou and 

459 



460 



GEORGE DARLEY. 



Abbot and abbess, side by side, return 

To old companionship of innocence. 

Our hearts re-purified at the altar's flame: 

And thus let second childhood lead us, lovingly 

As did the first, adown life's gentle slope, 

To our unrocking cradle — one same grave ] 

Etii. I could, even now, sleep to the lullaby 
Sung by Death's gossip, that assiduous crone, 
Who hushes all our race ! — if one hope fail, 
One single, life-endearing hope — 

Eclg. Dear brother, [brow. 

Take hope from my content ! — though pale this 
'Tis calm as if she smiled on it, yon Prioress 
Of heaven's pure nunnery, whose placid cheer 
O'erlooks the world beneath her ; this wren's voice. 
Though weak, preserveth lightsome tone and tenor. 
Ne'er sick with joy like the still-hiccupping swal- 
low's. 
Ne'er like the nightingale's with grief. Believe me 
Seclusion is the blessedest estate 
Life owns ; woulJst be amongst the bless'd on earth, 
Hie thither ! 

Etli, Ay — and what are my poor Saxons 
To do without their king ? — 

Edg. Have they not thanes 
And chiefs 1 — 

Eth. Without their father ! their defender ] 
Now specially, when rumours of the Dane 
Borne hither by each chill Norwegian wind, 
Like evening thunder creep along the ocean 
With many a mutter'd threat of morrow dire"? 
No ! no ! I must not now desert my Saxons, 
Who ne'er deserted me ! 

Edg. Is there none else 
To king it ] 

Eth. None save the Etheling should ; he cannot: 
Childe Edmund is o'er-green in wit; though pre- 
mature 
In that too for his years, and grown by exercise 
Of arms, and practice of all manlike feats, — 
Which his bent towards them makes continual, 
As young hawks love to use their beaks and wings 
In coursing sparrows ere let loose at herons, — 
Grown his full pitch of stature. Ah! dear sister, 
Thy choice and lot with thy life's duties cliime, 
All cast for privacy. So best ! our world 
Hath need of such as thee and thy fair nuns, 
And these good fathers of the monastery. 
To teach youth, tend the poor, the sick, the sad, 
Relume the extinguish'd lights of ancient lore, 
Making each little cell a glorious lantern 
To beam forth truth o'er our benighted age. 
With other functions high, howe'er so humble, 
Which I disparage not! But, dearest sister, 
Even the care of our own soul becomes 
A sin — base selfishness — when we neglect 
All care for others; and self-love too oft 
Is the dark shape in which the devil haunts 
Nunneries, monkeries, and most privacies, 
Where your devout recluse, devoted less 
To God than self, works for his single weal ; 
When like that God he should, true catholic, 

Advance the universal where he may 

You see this penitential garb, 
Yet call me best of men 1 



Edg. It has been worn 
Long, long enow ! 'Tis time it were put off. 

Eih. How soon will he put off his wretched 
O Edgitha ! [shroud ] 

Edg. Pour all into my breast ! 
Thine is o'erflowing! 

Eth. No ! Unbosom'd pain 
Is half dismiss'd. I'll keep my punisher with me. 
Press me not ! there is a way to crush the heart 
And still its aching as you bind the head 
When it throbs feverish. 

Edg. Have care of that ! 
There is a way to secret suicide, 
By crushing the swoln heart until you kill. 
Beware ! self-death is no less sinful, given 
By sorrow's point conceal'd than by the sword. 

Eth. Nay, I am jocund ; let's to supper ! There ! 
A king shall be his own house-knight, and serve. 
See what a feast ! we Saxons love good cheer ! 

[He takes from a cupboard pulse, bread, and wafer.] 
Edg. Ah ! when he will but smile, how he can 
smile ! 
'Tis feigning all ! this death sits on his bosom 
Heavily as Night-Mara's horned steed : 
His cares for the whole realm oppress him too: 
And our book-learned Prior oft draws up 
From some deep fountain a clear drop of truth, 
Great natures are much given to melancholy. 



A SONG FROM ETHELSTAN. 

O'er the wild gannet's bath 
Come the Norse coursers ! 
O'er the whale's heritance 
Gloriously steering ! 
With beak'd heads peering, 
Deep-plunging, high-rearing, 
Tossing their foam abroad. 
Shaking white manes aloft, 
Creamy-neck'd, pitchy-ribb'd. 
Steeds of the Ocean! 

O'er the Sun's mirror green 
Come the Norse coursers ! 
Trampling its glassy breadth 
Into bright fragments ! 
Hollow-back'd, huge-bosom'd. 
Fraught with mail'd riders, 
Clanging with hauberks, 
Shield, spear, and battle-axe, 
Canvas-wing'd, cable-rein'd. 
Steeds of the Ocean ! 

O'er the wind's ploughing-field 
Come the Norse coursers ! 
By a hundred each ridden, 
To the bloody feast bidden, 
They rush in their fierceness 
And ravine all round them! 
Their shoulders enriching 
With fleecy-light plunder. 
Fire-spreading, foe-spurning. 
Steeds of the Ocean ! 



GEORGE DARLEY. 



46] 



SONG OF THE SUMMER WINDS. 

Up the dale and down the bourne, 

O'er the meadow swift we tly ; 
Now we sing, and now we mourn, 

Now we whistle, now we sigh. 

By the grassy-fringed river. 

Through the murmuring reeds we sweep; 
Mid the lily-leaves we quiver, 

To their very hearts we creep. 

Now the maiden rose is blushing 

At the frolic things we say. 
While aside her cheek we're rushing, 

Like some truant bees at play. 

Through the blooming groves we rustle, 

Kissing every bud we pass, — 
As we did it in the bustle, 

Scarcely knowing how it was. 

Down the glen, across the mountain. 
O'er the yellow heath we roam. 

Whirling round about the fountain 
Till its little breakers foam. 

Bending down the weeping willows. 
While our vesper hymn we sigh; 

Then unto our rosy pillows 
On our weary wings we hie. 

There of idlenesses dreaming. 
Scarce from waking we refrain, 

Moments long as ages deeming 
Till we're at our play again. 



THE GAMBOLS OF CHILDREN. 

Down the dimpled green-sward dancing 

Bursts a flaxen-headed bevy, 
Bud-lipt boys and girls advancing, 

Love's irregular little levy. 

Rows of liquid eyes in laughter. 

How they glimmer, how they quiver ! 

Sparkling one another after. 
Like bright ripples on a river. 

Tipsy band of rubious faces, 

Flush'd with joy's ethereal spirit. 

Make your mocks and sly grimaces 
At love's self, and do not fear it. 



A VILLAGE BLACKSMITH. 

Here he, your law, vociferous wits, 
Strong son of the sounding anvil, sits; 
Black and sharp his eyebrow edge. 
His hand smites heavily as his sledge — 
At will he kindles brii^ht discourse. 
Or blows it out, with blustrous force ; 
The fiery talk, with dominant clamour. 
Moulds as hot metal with his hammer. 
Yet this swart sinewy boisterer. 
His wife and babe sit smiling near. 
All fiirncss with all feebleness in her arms. 
Safe in their innocence and in their charms. 



SUICIDE. 

Fool ! I mean not 
That poor-soul'd piece of heroism, self-slaughter: 
Oh no ! the miserablest day we live 
There's many a better thing to do than die ! 



THE FAIRIES. 

Suffice to say, that smoother glade, 
Kept greener by a deeper shade. 
Never by antler'd form was trod ; 
Never was strown by that white crowd 
Which nips with pettish haste the grass ; 
Never was lain upon by lass 
In harvest time, when Love is tipsy, 
And steals to coverts like a gipsy. 
There to unmask his ruby face 
In unreproved luxuriousness. 
'Tis true, in brief, of this sweet place. 
What the tann'd moon-bearer did feign 
Of one rich spot in his own Spain : 
The part just o'er it in the skies 
Is the true seat of Paradise. 

Have you not oft, in the still wind. 
Heard sylvan notes of a strange kind. 
That rose one moment, and then fell, 
Swooning away like a far knell ? 
Listen ! — that wave of perfume broke 
Into sea-music, as I spoke. 
Fainter than that which seems to roar 
On the moon's silver-sanded shore. 
When through the silence of the night 
Is heard the ebb and flow of light. 
Oh, shut the eye and o])e the ear ! 
Do'you not hear, or think you hear, 
A wide hush o'er the woodland pass 
Like distant waving fields of grass T — 
Voices I — ho ! ho ! — a band is coming. 
Loud as ten thousand bees a-humming, 
Or ranks of little merry men 
Tromboning deeply from the glen, 
And now as if they changed, and rung 
Their citterns small, and riband-slung. 
Over their gallant shoulders hung ! — 
A chant ! a chant ! that swoons and swells 
Like soft winds jangling meadow-bells ; 
Now brave, as when in Flora's bower 
Gay Zephyr blows a trumpet-flower; 
Now thriUing fine, and sharp, and clear, 
Like Dian's moonbeam dulcimer; 
But mix'd with whoops, and infant laughter, 
Shouts following one another after, 
As on a hearty holy day 
When youth is flush and full of May ; 
Small shouts, indeed, as wild bees knew 
Both how to hum. and holloa too. 
What ! is the living meadow sown 
With dragon-teeth, as long agone I 
Or is an army on the plains 
Of this sweet clime, to fi^ht with cranes ! 
Helmet and hauberk, pike and lance. 
Gorget and glaive through the long grass glance; 
Red-men, and bkie-mcn, and buff-men, small, 
Loud-mouth'd captains, and ensigns tall, 
•2q2 



462 



GEORGE DARLEY. 



Grenadiers, lightbobs, inch-people all, 
They come ! they come ! with martial blore 
Clearing a terrible path before ; 
Ruffle the high-peak 'd flags i' the wind, 
Mourn the long-answering trumpets behind, 
Telling how deep the close files are — 
Make way for the stalwarth sons of war ! 
Hurrah ! the bluff-cheek'd bugle band, 
Each with a loud reed in his hand ! 
Hurrah ! the pattering company. 
Each with a drum-bell at his knee ! 
Hurrah ! the sash-capt cymbal swingers ! 
Hurrah ! the klingle-klangle ringers I 
Hurrah ! hurrah ! the eU-knights enter, 
Each with his grasshopper at a canter ! 
His tough spear of a wild oat made, 
His good sword of a grassy blade, 
His buckram suit of shining laurel, 
His shield of bark, eraboss'd with coral ; 
See how the plumy champion keeps 
His proud steed clambering on his hips, 
With foaming jaw pinn'd to his breast, 
Blood-rolling eyes, and arched crest; 
Over his and his rider's head 
A broad-sheet butterfly banner spread, 
Swoops round the statT in varying form, 
Flouts the soft breeze, but courts the storm. 

Hard on the prancing heel of these 
Come on the pigmy Thyades; 
Mimics and mummers, masqueraders, 
Soft flutists and sweet serenaders 
Guitarring o'er the level green, 
Or tapping the parch'd tambourine, 
As swaying to, and swaying fro. 
Over the stooping flowers they go. 
That laugh within their greeny breasts 
To feel such light feet on their crests. 
And ev'n themselves a-dancing seem 
Under the weight that presses them. 

But hark! the trumpet's royal clangour 
Strikes silence with a voice of anger : 
Raising its broad mouth to the sun 
As he would bring Apollo down. 
The in-back'd, swoln, elf-winder fills 
With its great roar the fairy hills ; 
Each woodland tuft for terror shakes, 
The field-mouse in her mansion quakes. 
The heart-struck wren falls through the branches. 
Wild stares the earwig on his haunches ; 
From trees which mortals take for flowers. 
Leaves of all hues fall off in showers ; 
So strong the blast, the voice so dread, 
'T would wake the very fairy dead ! 

Disparted now, half to each side. 
Athwart the curled moss they glide, 
Then wheel and front, to edge the scene. 
Leaving a spacious glade between ; 
With small round eyes that twinkle bright 
As moon-tears on the grass of night, 
They stand spectorial, anxious all, 
Like guests ranged down a dancing hall. 



Some graceful pair, or more to see 
Winding along in melody. 

Nor pine their little orbs in vain. 
For borne in with an oaten strain 
Three pretty Graces, arm-entwined. 
Reel in the light curls of the wind ; 
Their flimsy pinions sprouted high 
Lift them half-dancing as they fly ; 
Like a bright wheel spun on its side 
The rapt three round their centre slide. 
And as their circling has no end 
Voice into sister voice they blend, 
Weaving a labyrinthian song 
Wild as the rings they trace along. 



A RURAL RETREAT. 

ENTER JOHN OF SALISBURY WITH A BOOK. • 

John of S. Formosam resonare doces Amaryl- 
lida sylvas. 

Let me pause here, both tongue and foot ; such 

melody 
Of words doth strike the wild-birds mute to hear it ! 
Honey-lipp'd Virgil, 'tis an ignorant truth 
To name thee — Sorcerer; for thou dost indeed 
Enchant by happiest art! — Here is a place 
To meditate thy sylvan music in. 
Which seems the very echo of these woods. 
As if some dryad taught thee to resound it. 
Oh gentle breeze, what lyrist of the air 
Tunes her soft chord with visionary hand 
To make thy voice so dulcet] Oh ye boughs 
Whispering with numerous lips your kisses close 
How sweet ye mingle secret words and sighs ! 
Doth not this work grow warmer with the hum 
Of fervent bees, blithe murmurers at their toil, 
Minstrels most bland ! Here the dim cushat, perch'd 
Within his pendulous arbour, plaintive woos, 
With restless love-call, his ne'er distant mate ; 
While changeful choirs do flit from tree to tree, 
All various in their notes, yet chiming all 
Involuntary, like the songs of cherubim. 
Oh, how by accident, apt as art, drops in 
Each tone to make the whole harmonial. [sounds 
And when need were, thousands of wandering 
Though aimless, would, with exquisite error sad, 
Fill up the diapason ! Pleasant din ! 
So fine that even the cricket can be heard [mark'd 
Soft fluttering through the grass. Long have I 
The silver toll of a clear-dipping well 
Peal in its bright parishioners, ouphes and elves : 
'Tis nigh me, certes ! — I will peer between 
These honeysuckles for it — Lo ! in verity 
A Sylph, with veil-fallen hair down to her feet. 
Bending her o'er the waters, and I think 
Giving them purer crystal from her eyes — 
Oh learned John, but thou art grown fantastic 
As a romancer ! 



THOMAS WADE. 



Mr. Wade is the author of Mundi et Cordis 
Carmina, Helena, the .Tew of Arra^on, the 
Death of Ginderode and Prothanasia, the last 
of which is founded on a passage in the corre- 
spondenceofBETTiNEBRENTiANO with Goethe. 



Leigh Hunt says of him, " He is a pod ,• he is 
overflowing with fancy and susceptibility, and 
not without the finest subtleties of imagina- 
tion." Praise from a high source, and not 
ill deserved. 



A PROPHECY. 

There is a mighty dawning on the earth, 
Of human glory : dreams unknown before 
Fill the mind's boundless world, and wondrous birth 
Is given to great thought: or the deep-drawn lore, 
But late a bidden fount, at which a few 
Quafl["'d and were glad, is now a flowing river, 
Wbich the parch'd nations may approach and view, 
Kneel down and drink, or float in it for ever: 
The bonds of spirit are asunder broken. 
And matter makes a very sport of distance ; 
On every side appears a silent token 
Of what will be hereafter, when existence 
Shall even become a pure and equal thing, 
And earth sweep high as heaven, on solemn wing. 



VOLITION. 

God will'd creation : but creation was not 
The cause of that Almighty Will of God, 
But that great God's desire of emanation: 
Beauty of human love the object is; 
But love's sweet cause lives in the soul's desire 
For intellectual, sensual sympathies : 
Seeing a plain-plumed bird, in whose deep throat 
We know the richest power of music dwells, 
We long to hear its linked melodies : 
Scenting a far-olT flower's most sweet perfume. 
That gives its balm of life to every wind, 
We crave to mark the beauty of its bloom : 
But bird nor flower is that volition's cause: [laws. 
But music and fine grace, graven on the soul, like 



THE BRIDE. 

Let the trim tapers burn exceeding brightly ! 
And the white bed be deck'd as for a goddess, 
Who must be pillow'd, like high vesper, nightly 
On couch ethereal ! Be the curtains fleecy, 
Like vesper's fairest when calm nights are breezy — 
Transparent, parting — showing what they hide. 
Or strive to veil — by mystery deified ! 
The floor, gold-carpet, that her zone and boddice 
May lie in honour where they gently fall, 
Slow loosened from her form symmetrical — 
Like mist from sunlight. Burn, sweet odours, burn! 
For incense at the altar of her pleasure ! 
Let music breathe with a voluptuous measure. 
And witchcrafts trance her wheresoe'er she turn. 



THE POETRY OF EARTH. 

"The Poetry of Earth is never dead," 
Even in the cluster'd haunts of plodding men. 
Before a door in citied underground. 
Lies a man-loving, faith-expression'd hound- 
To pastoral hills forth tending us ; to den 
Of daring bandit; and to regions dread 
Of mountain-snows, where others of its kind 
Tend upon man's, as with a human mind. 
.\ golden beetle on the dusty steps 
Crawls, of a wayside-plying vehicle, 
Wliere wending men swarm thick and gloomily: 
We gaze; and see beneath the ripening sky 
7'he harvest glisten ; and that creature creeps 
Upon the sunny corn, radiantly visible ! 



THE SERE OAK-LEAVES. 

Why do ye rustle in this vernal wind, 
Sere leaves I shaking a dread prophetic shroud 
Over the very cradle of the spring 1 
Like pertinacious Age, with warnings loud. 
Dinning the grave into an infant's mind, 
And shadowing death on life's first imaging ! 
Why to these teeming branches do ye cling. 
And with your argument renascence cloud; 
Whilst every creature of new birth is proud. 
And in unstain'd existence revelling'? 
Fall, and a grave within the centre find ! 
And do not thus, whilst all the sweet birds sing. 
The insects glitter, and the flower'd grass waves, 
Blight us with thoughts of winter and our graves! 



THE SWAN-AVIARY. 

A THOTJSASD swans are o'er the waters sailing. 
And others in the reeds and rushes brood. 
And more are flying o'er the sunny flood; 
And all move with a grandeur so prevailing, 
That long we stand, without a breath inhaling. 
In admiration of their multitude, 
And the majestic grace with which endued 
They float upon the waves, their pride regaling. 
The sky is blue and golden ; clear as glass. 
The sea sweeps richly on the glowing shingle ; 
All vernal hues in the near woods commingle; 
And exquisite beauty waves along the grass ; 
But these things seem but humbly tributary 
To the white pomp of that vast aviary ! 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



Mr. Browning's first appearance as an au- 
thor was in 1835, when he published Para- 
celsus, a dramatic poem founded on the his- 
tory of the celebrated professor of that name at 
Basil, in the days of Luther and Erasmus. 
He has since written three tragedies, entitled 
Strafford, King Victor and King Charles, and 
A Blot in the 'Scutcheon; and many shorter 
pieces, most of which are included in his 
Bells and Pomegranates, issued by Moxon in 
1843. There are in Mr. Browning's writings 
vigour, force of character, and passionate 
strength ; but unhappily few of them are 
adapted to the popular apprehension. They 
are not easily read in the boudoir, where the 



perusal of Moore and Rogers is the highest 
exertion of intellect. Indeed, with some strik- 
ing merits which will give them an influence 
in the formation of the taste of another gene- 
ration, the)^ are deformed by so many novel- 
ties of construction, and affectations of various 
kinds, that few will have patience to wade 
through his marshes to cull the flowers with 
which they are scattered. Mr. Browning's 
Blot in the 'Scutcheon was acted in 1843, 
under the management of Mr. Macready. 
Though its dramatic qualities were in direct 
opposition to t!ie prevailing style of the stage, 
it met with a hearty reception from the best 
critics. 



EXTRACT FROM PARACELSUS. 

With still a flying point of bliss remote, 
A happiness in store afar, a sphere 
Of distant glory in full view, thus climbs 
Pleasure its heights for ever and for ever ! 
The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, 
And the earth changes like a human face ; 
The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, 
Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright 
In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, 
Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask — 
God joys therein ! . . . . Earth is a wintry clod ; 
But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
Over its breast to waken it ; rare verdure 
Buds here and there upon rough banks, between 
The wither'd tree-roots and the cracks of frost ; 
The grass growsbrigbt, the boughs are swollen with 
Like chrysalids impatient for the air; [blooms. 
The shining dorrs are busy; beetles run 
Along the furrows, ants make their ado; 
Above birds fly in merry flocks — the lark 
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; 
Afar the ocean sleeps ; white fishin^^-guUs 
Flit where the strand is purple witli its tribe 
Of nested limpets ; savage creatures seek 
Their loves in wood arid plain; and God renews 
His ancient rapture ! Thus he dwells in all, 
From life's minute beginnings, up at last 
To man — the consummation of this scheme 
Of being — the completion of this sphere 
Of life': whose attributes had here and there 
Been scatter'd o'er the visible world before. 
Asking to be combined — dim fragments meant 
To be united in some wondrous whole — 
Imperfect qualities throughout creation, 
Suggesting some one creature yet to make — 
46i 



some point 

Whereto those wandering rays should all converge; 

Might: neither put forth blindly, nor controll'd 

Calmly by perfect knowledge — to be used 

At risk — inspired or chcck'd by hope and fear; 

Knowledge: not intuition, but the slow 

Uncertain fruit of an enhancing toil, 

Strengthen'd by love ; love : not serenely pure, 

But power from weakness, like a chance-sown plant, 

Which, caston stubborn soil, puts forth changed buds, 

And softer stains, unknown in happier climes: 

A blind, unfailing, and devoted love. 

And half-enlighten'd, often-checker'd trust. 

Anticipations, bints of these and more 

Are strewn confusedly everywhere — all seek 

An object to | ossess and stamp their own ; 

All shape out dimly the forthcoming race, 

The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false, 

And man appears at last : so far the seal 

Is put on life : one stage of being complete. 

One scheme wound up; and from the grand result 

A supplementary reflux of light 

Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains 

Each back step in the circle ; not alone 

The clear dawn of those qualities shines out, 

But the new glory mixes with the heaven 

And earth. Man, once descried, imprints for ever 

His presence on all lifeless things — the winds 

Are henceforth voices, wailing, or a shout 

A querulous mutter, or a quick, gay laugh — 

Never a senseless gust now man is born : 

Theherded pines commune, and have deep thoughts, 

A secret they assemble to discuss, [glare 

When the .sun drops behind their trunks which 

Like grates of hell : the peerless cup afloat 

Of the lake-lily is an urn; some nymph 

Swims bearing high above her head : no bird 

Whistles unseen, but through the gaps above 



ROBERT BROWNING. 



465 



That let light in upon the gloomy woods, 

A shape peeps from the breezy forest-top, 

Arch with small puckcr'd mouth aiul mocking eye: 

The morn has enterprise — deep quiet droops 

With evening — triumph when the sun takes rest — 

Voluptuous transport when the corn-fields ripen 

Beneath a warm moon like a happy face: 

And this to fill us with regard for man, 

Deep apprehension of his passing worth, 

Desire to work his proper nature out. 

To ascertain his rank and final place, 

For all these things tend upward — progress is 

The law of life — man is not man as yet : 

Nor shall I deem his object served, his end 

Attain'd, his genuine strength put fairly out, 

Wiiile only here and there a star dispels 

The darkness — here and there a towering mind 

O'erlooks its crawling fellov/s : when the host 

Is out at once to the despair of night ; 

When all mankind is perfected alike, 

Equal in full-blown powers — then, not till then. 

Begins the general infancy of man. 



EXTRACTS FROM SORDELLO. 

CARYATIDES BY SUNSET. 

BcT quick 
To the main wonder now. A vault, see ; thick 
Black shade about the ceiling, through fine slits 
Across the buttress suffer light by fits 
Upon a marvel in the midst : nay, stoop — 
A dullish gray-streak'd cumbrous font, a group 
Round it, each side of it, where'er one sees. 
Upholds it — shrinking caryatides 
Of just-tinged marble like Eve's lilied flesh 
Beneath her Maker's finger, when the fresh 
First pulse of life shot brightening the snow: 
The font's edge burdens every shoulder, so 
They muse upon the ground, eyelids half closed, 
Some, with meek arms behind their backs disposed. 
Some, cross'd above their bosoms, some, to veil 
Their eyes, some, propping chin and cheek so pale, 
Some, hanging slack an utter helpless length 
Dead as a buried vestal whose whole strength 
Goes when the grate abo.'e shuts heavily; 
So dwell these noiseless girls, patient to see, 
Like priestesses because of sin impure 
Penanced for ever, who resign'd endure. 
Having that once drunk sweetness to the dregs; 
And every eve Sordello's visit begs 
Pardon for them : constant as eve he came 
To sit beside each in her turn, the same 
As one of them, a certain space; and awe 
Made a great indistinctness, till he saw 
Sunset slant cheerful through the buttress chinks. 
Gold seven times globed; surely our maiden shrinks, 
And a smile stirs her as if one faint grain 
Her load were lighten'd, one shade less the stain 
Obscured her forehead, j'et one more bead slipt 
From off the rosary whereby the crypt 
Keeps count of the contritions of its charge 1 
Then with a step more light, a heart more large. 
He may depart, leave her and every one 
To linger out the penance in mute stone. 
59 



EG(,AMOR. 

He, no genius rare, 
Transfiguring in fire or wave or air 
At will, but a poor gnome that, cloistcr'd up 
In some rock-chamber with his agate cup. 
His topaz rod, his seed-pearl, in these few 
And their arrangement finds enough to do 
For his best art. Then, how he loved that art! 
The calling marking him a man apart 
From men — one not to care, take counsel for 
Cold hearts, comfortless faces, (Eglamor 
Was neediest of his tribe,) since verse, the gift. 
Was his, and men, the whole of them, must shift 
Without it, e'en content themselves with wealth 
And pomp and power, snatching a life by stealth. 
So Eglamor was not vi'ithout his pride! 
The sorriest bat which cowers through noontide 
While other birds are jocund, has one time 
When moon and stars are blinded, and the prime 
Of earth is its to claim, nor find a peer. 



AN INCIDENT AT RATISBON. 

You know we French storm'd Ratisbon: 

A mile or so away 
On a little mound, Napoleon 

Stood on our storming day ; 
With neck out-thrust, you fancy hovp, 

Legs wide, arms lock'd behind, 
As if to balance the prone brow 

Oppressive with its mind. 
Just as perhaps he mused, " My plans 

That soar, to earth may fall 
Let once my army-loader Lannes 

Waver at yonder wall ;" 
Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew 

A rider, bound on bound 
Full-galloping ; nor Iiridle drew 

Until he reach'd the mound. 
Then off there flung in smiling joy, 

And held himself erect 
Just by his horse's mane, a boy : 

You hardly could suspect — 
(So tight he kept his lips compress'd, 

Scarce any blood came through.) 
You look'd twice e'er you saw his breast 

Was all but shot in two. 
" Well," cried he, " Emperor, by God's grace 

We've got you Ratisbon ! 
The marshal's in the market-place, 

And you'll be there anon 
To see your flag-bird flap his vans 

W^herc I, to heart's desire, 
Perch'd him." The chief's eye flash'd ; his plans 

Soar'd up again like fire. 
The chief's eye flash'd ; but presently 

Softcn'd itself, as sheathes 
A film the mother eagle's eye 

When her bruised eaglet breathes : 
«' You're wounded !" " Nay," his soldier's pride 

Touch'd to the quick, he said ; 
"I'm kill'd, sire !" And, his chief beside. 

Smiling the boy fell dead. 



RICHARD HENRY HORNE. 



Mr. HoRNE belongs to the intellectual bro- 
therhood of whom we have already given 
specimens, in the notices of Darley, Brown- 
ing, and others. He has written several dra- 
matic poems and sketches, among which are 
The Death of Marlowe, Cosmo de' Medici, 
and Gregory the Seventh, all of which have 
met the approval of the critics. His latest 
production (excepting The New Spirit of the 
Age, of which he acknowledges himself to be 
the editor only) is Orion, an epic poem, 
which, aside from its intrinsic merits, will 
find its record in the Curiosities of Litera- 
ture for the novel circumstances of its pub- 
lication. It was offered to the public at vari- 
ous prices, commencing with a farthing and 
rising through successive stages to a half- 
crown in its fourth edition. In Orion we have 
modern transcendentalism wedded to the old 
Greek mythology. Orion, wandering in the 
mountains of Chios, encounters Artemis, who 
loves him, and by her love elevates his na- 
ture, but fails to make him happy. In a dream 
he sees Merope, the daughter of ffinopion, 
king of Chios, who warns him to beware of 
Artemis, and on awaking he seeks and wins 
the affection of the princess. The king de- 
rides his pretensions, but promises him the 
hand of his daughter if in six days he will 
destroy the beasts and serpents of the island. 



This he accomplishes, but (Enopion hesitat- 
ing to fulfil his agreement, the giants make 
war against him and carry oS RIerope, with 
whom Orion lives happily in a secluded grove 
until the king discovers his retreat and de- 
prives him of sight. In his wretchedness, 
deserted by Merope, he seeks the aid of Eos, 
viho unseals his eyes and loves him with an 
affection which satisfies his soul. The jea- 
lous Artemis now destroys him; but repents, 
and joins with Eos in a prayer to Zeus for 
the restoration of his life. The prayer is 
granted ; Orion is made immortal, placed 
among the constellations, and enjoys for ever 
the love of Eos. This slight outline of the 
fable is necessary to a proper understanding 
of the extracts from the poem which are given 
in this volume. 

Mr. HoRNE is also author of an Essay on 
Tragic Influence, and an Introduction to Schle- 
gel's Lectures on Draniatic Literature and 
Art; and he was associated with Words- 
worth, Leigh Hunt, Miss Barrett, and 
others, in the production of Chaucer Modern- 
ized, to which he prefixed an admirable essay 
on the riches of English poetry and the de- 
velopment of the principles of versification, 
by which the rhythm of Chaucer is fully 
sustained, and which no poet who has a love 
for his art should fail to read. 



EXTRACTS FROM ORION. 

THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF ORION. 

The scene in front two sloping mountains' sides 
Display'd; in shadow one and one in light. 
The loftiest on its summit now sustain'd 
The sun-beams, raying like a mighty wheel 
Half seen, whicli left the forward sunlice dark 
In its full breadth of shade ; the coming sun 
Hidden as yet behind : the other mount, 
Slanting transvei'se, swept with an eastward face 
Catching the golden light. Now while the peal 
Of the ascending chase told that the rout 
Still midway rent tlie thickets, suddenly 
Along the broad and sunny slope appear'd 
The shadow of a stag that fled across, 
Followed by a giant's shadow luith a spear. 



MORNING. 

O'er meadows green or solitary lawn, 
When birds appear earth's sole inhabitants, 
The long, clear shadows of the morning differ 
From those of eve, which are more soft and vague, 
Suggestive of past days and mellow'd grief. 
The lights of morning, even as her shades, 
Are architectural, and pre-eminent 
In quiet freshness, midst the pause that holds 
Prelusive energies. All life awakes, 
Morn comes at first with white, uncertain light ; 
Then takes a faint red, like an opening bud 
Seen through gray mist; tlie mist clears of; the sky 
Unfolds; grows ruddy; takes a crimson flush; 
Puts forth bright sprigs of gold, — which soon ex- 
panding 



RICHARD HENRY HORNE. 



467 



In saffron, thence pure golden shines the morn ; 
UpUfts its clear, bright fabric of white clouds, 
All tinted, like a shell of polish'd pearl, 
With varied glancings, violet gleam and blush ; 
Embraces nature; and then passes on, 
Leaving the sun to perfect his great work. 



SUMMER NOON. 

THEnE was a slumbrous silence in the air, 
By noon-tide's sultry murmurs from without 
Made more oblivious. Not a pipe was heard 
From field or wood ; but the grave beetle's drone 
Pass'd near the entrance : once the cuckoo call'd 
O'er distant meads, and once a horn began 
Melodious plaint, then died away. A sound 
Of murmurous music yet was in the breeze. 
For silver gnats that harp on glassy strings. 
And rise and fall in sparkling clouds, sustain'd 
Their dizzy dances o'er the seething meads. 



BUILDING OF THE PALACE OF POSEIDON. 

Fon him I built a palace underground. 
Of iron, black and rough as his own hands. 
Deep in the groaning, disembowel'd earth, 
The tower-broad pillars and huge stanchions, 
And slant supporting wedges I set up, 
Aided by the Cyclops who obey'd my voice. 
Which through the metal fabric rang and peal'd 
In orders echoing far, like thunder-dreams. 
With arches, galleries, and domes all carved — 
So that great figures started from the roof 
And lofty coignes, or sat and downward gazed 
On those who strode below and gazed above — 
I fill'd it ; in the centre framed a hall : 
Central in that, a throne ; and for the light. 
Forged mighty hammers that should rise and fall 
On slanted rocks of granite and of flint, 
Work'd by a torrent, for whose passage down 
A chasm I hew'd. And here the god could take. 
Midst showery sparks and swathes of broad, gold fire, 
His lone repose, lull'd by the sounds he loved ; 
Or, casting back the hammer-heads till they choked 
The water's course, enjoy, if so he wish'd. 
Midnight tremendous, silence, and iron, sleep. 



ORION'S EXTIRPATION OF THE BEASTS 
FROM CHIOS. 

Fresh trees he fell'd and wove 
More barriers and fences ; inaccessible 
To fiercest charge of droves, and to o'erleap 
Impossible. These walls he so arranged 
That to a common centre each should force 
The flight of those pursued; and from that centre 
Diverged three outlets: one, the wide expanse 
Which from the rocks and inland forests led ; 
One was the clear-skied windy gap above 
A precipice ; the third, a long ravine [ran 

winch through steep slopes, down to the seashore 
Winding, and then direct into the sea. 

Orion, in each hand 
Waving a torch, his course at night began, 



Through wildest haunts and lairs of savage beasts. 
With long-drawn howl, before him troop'd the 

wolves — 
The panthers, terror-stricken, and the bears 
With wonder and gruff rage ; from desolate crags 
Leering hyenas, griffin, hippogriff", 
Skulk'd, or sprang madly, as the tossing brands 
Flash'd through the midnight nooksand hollo wscold. 
Sudden as fire from flint; o'er crashing thickets, 
With crouch'd head and curl'd fangs dash'd the wild 
Gnashing forth on with reckless impulses, [boar. 
While the clear-purposed fox crept closely down 
Into the underwood, to let the storm, 
Whate'er its cause, pass over. Through dark fens, 
Marshes, green rushy swamps, and margins reedy, 
Orion held his way — and rolling shapes 
Of serpent and of dragon moved before him 
With high-rear'd crests, swan-like, yet terrible. 
And often looking back with gem-like eyes. 
All night Orion urged his rapid course 
In the vex'd rear of the swift-droving din. 
And when the dawn had peer'd, the monsters all 
Were hemm'd in barriers. These he now o'erheap'd 
With fuel through the day, and when again 
N^ight darken'd, and the sea a gulf-like voice 
Sent forth, the barriers at all points he fired. 
Mid prayers to Hephffistos and his ocean-sire. 
Soon as the flames had eaten out a gap 
In the great barrier fronting the ravine 
That ran down to the sea, Orion grasp'd 
Two blazing boughs ; one high in air he raised, 
The other, with its roaring foliage, trail'd 
Behind him as he sped. Onward the droves 
Of frantic creatures with one impulse roll'd 
Before this night-devouring thing of flames, 
With multitudinous voice and downward sweep 
Into the sea, which now first knew a tide. 
And, ere they made one effort to regain 
The shore, had caught them in its flowing arms, 
And bore them past all hope. The living mass. 
Dark heaving o'er the waves residtlessly, 
At length, in distance seem'd a circle small. 
Midst which one creature in the centre rose. 
Conspicuous in the long, red, quivering gleams 
That from the dyingbrands stream'd o'erthe waves. 
It was the oldest dragon of the fens, 
Whose forky flag-wings and horn-crested head 
O'er crags and marshes regal sway had held ; 
And now he rose up like an embodied curse, 
Fromallthedoom'd, fast sinking — some just sunk — 
Look'd landward o'er the sea, and flapp'd his vans, 
Until Poseidon drew them swirling down. 



RESTORATION OF ORION. 

Now had Poseidon with tridental spear 
Torn up the smitten sea, which raged on high 
With grief and anger for Orion slain ; 
And black Hephrestos deep beneath the earth 
A cold thrill felt through his metallic veins, 
Which soon with sparkling fire began to writhe 
Like serpents, till from each volcanic peak 
Burst smoke and threatening flames. Day hid his 
And while the body of Orion sunk [head. 

Drawn down into the embraces of the sea, 



468 



RICHARD HENRY HORNE. 



The four wimls with confronting fury arose, 
And to a common centre drove their blasts, 
Which, meeting, brake like thunder-stone, or shells 
Of war, far scattering. Siiipwreck fed the deep. 
No moon had dared the ringing vault to climb; 
No star, no meteor's steed ; and ancient night 
Shook the dishevell'd lightning from her brows, 
Then sank in deeper gloom. Ere long the roar 
RoH'd through a distant yawning chasm of flame, 
Dying away, and in the air obscure, 
Feverish and trcml)ling — like the breath of one 
Recovering from convulsion's throes — appear'd 
Two wavering misty shapes upon a mount: 
Whence now a solemn and reproachful voice, 
With broken pauses spake, and thus lamented : 

" Call it not love ! — oh never yet for thee 
Did love's aml)rosial pinions fan the hours. 
To lose themselves in bliss, which memory 
Alone can find, so to renew their life. 
Thou couldst not ever thus enjoy, thus give 
Thy nature fully up; thine attributes, 
Whate'er of loveliness or high estate 
They own'd, surrendering all before love's feast. 
And in his breath to melt. How shall we name 
Thy passion — ice-pure, self-entire, exacting 
All worship, for a limited return? 
But how, ah me ! shall time record t!ie hour. 
When with thy bow — its points curved stiffly back, 
Like a snake's neck preparing for a spring — 
Thou stood'st in lurid ire behind a cloud. 
And loosed the fatal shaft ! Where then was love ] 
Oh Artemis ! Oh miserable queen ! 
Call it pride, jealousy, revenge — self-love; 
No other. Thou repliest not. Whei-efore pride ? 
Thou gavest thyself that wound, rejecting one 
Who to thee tender'd all his nature; noble, 
Though earth-born, as thou knew'st when first ye 
And thou not Zeus with a creator's power [met. 
His being to re-make 1 Thou answerest not. 
Why jealous, but because thou saw'st him happy 
Without thee, tho' cast off liy thee. Then wherefore 
Destroy? Revenge, the champion of self-love. 
Can make his well-known sign. Oh, horrible! 
Despair to all springs up from murder'd love, 
And smites revenge with idiotcy of grief. 
Seeing itself. But wake, and look upon 
My loss unutterable. What hast thou gain'd 1 
Nothing but anguish ; and for this accomplish'd 
His death, my loss, and the earth's loss beside 
Of that much needed hand. I curse thee not — 
Thouhast.indeed, cursed me — thou know'stitwell." 

With face bow'd o'er her bosom, Avtemis, 
As in sad trance, remain'd. The night was gone; 
The day had dawn'd, but she perceived it not ; 
Nor Eos knew that any light had pass'd 
From her rent robes. But hope unconsciously 
Grew up in her, and yet again she spake: 

" Ah me ! alas ! why came this great affliction, 
Which, indeed, seems beyond all remedy, 
Though scalding tears from our immortal eyes 
Make constant arcs in heaven. Beauty avails not 
Where power is needed. Seek we, then, for power, 
That some reviving or renewing beam 
May call him back, now pale in the deep sea. 
Thou answerest not. I think thou hast a heart, 



Which beats thy reasoning down to silent truth, 
And therefore deem I thou with me wilt seek 
The throne of Zeus, who may receive our prayers, 
Nor from our supplications utterly 
Take sorrow's sweetness, which hath secret hope, 
Like honey drops in some down-fallen flower." 

Her lofty pallid visage Artemis 
Raised slowly, but with eyes still downward bent 
Upon the ocean rolling dark below, 
And answer'd, "I will go with thee." The twain 
Departed heavily on their ascent [reach'd 

Through the gray air, and paused not till they 
The region of Olympos, where their course 
Was barrier'd by a mass of angry cloud 
Piled up in surging blackness, with a gleam 
Of smouldering red seen through at intervals. 
The sign well understood, both goddesses 
Knelt down before the cloud, and Artemis 
Broke silence first, with firm yet hollow voice: 

" Father of gods, and of the populous earth ! 
Who know'st the thoughts and deeds we most would 
And also know'st the secret thrill within, [hide; 
Which owns no thought nor action, yet comprises 
Ijife's sole excuse for what seems worthiest hate — 
Extremes and madden'd self-opposing springs — 
Not always thus excused, — O Zeus ! receive 
Our prayers, and chiefly mine, which pardon sue. 
Besides the dear request. Grant that the life 
Of him these hands, once dazzling white, have slain. 
May be to earth restored." More had she said, 
But the dark pile of clouds shook with the voice 
Of Zeus, who answer'd : " He shall be restored ; 
But not return'd to earth. His cycle moves 
Ascending!" The deep sea the announcement 
And from beneath its ever-shifting thrones [heard; 
The murmuring of a solemn joy sent up. 

The cloud expanded darkly o'er the heavens, 
Which, like a vault preparing to give back 
The heroic dead, yawn'd with its sacred gloom. 
And iron-crown'd Night her black breath pour'd 

around 
To meet the clouds that from Olympos roll'd 
Billows of darkness with a dirging roar, 
Which by gradations of high harmony 
Merged in triumphal strains. Their earnest eyes 
Fill'd v\'ith the darkness, and their hands still clasp'd. 
Kneeling, the goddesses bright rays perceived. 
Reflected, glance before them. Mute they rose 
With tender consciousness ; and, hand in hand. 
Turning, they saw, slow rising from the sea, 
The luminous giant clad in blazing stars, 
New-born and tremblingfrom their Maker's breath — 
Divine, refulgent effluence of love. 
With pale gold shield, like a translucent moon 
Through w hich the morning with ascending cheek 
Sheds a soft blush, warming cerulean veins ; 
With radiant belt of glory, typical 
Of happy change that o'er the zodiac rpund 
Of the world's monstrous fantasies shall come ; 
And in his hand a sword of peaceful power, 
Streaming like a meteor to direct the earth 
To victor)' over life's distress, and show [glooms; 
The future path whose light runs through death's 
In grandeur, like the birth of motion, rose 
The glorious giant, towards his place in heaven. 



FRANCES KEMBLE BUTLER. 



Mrs. Butler is a daughter of Charles 
Kemble, and a niece of John Philip Kemble 
and Mrs. Siddons. After a brilliant career 
at the Drury Lane Theatre, she in 1832 came 
Avith her father to the United States, where 
she played with unprecedented success in the 
principal cities, confirming a reputation already 
acquired as the greatest British actress of the 
age. In 1831 she retired from the stage and 
was married to Mr. Pierce Butler of Phila- 
delphia. 

Mrs. Butler is among the few of her pro- 
fession who have been eminent in the world 
of letters. Her dramas, Francis the First and 
the Star of Seville, were written when she 
was very young, and do not retain possession 
of the stage, though superior to many pieces 



which in this respect have been more fortu- 
nate. The volume of her shorter poems pub- 
lished in Philadelphia in 1844 entitles her to 
be ranked with the first class of living Eng- 
lish poetesses. Their general tone is melan- 
choly and desponding; but they are vigorous 
in thought and execution, and free from the 
sickly sentiment and puerile expression for 
which so much of the verse of the day is 
chiefly distinguisiied. She has written besides 
the works before mentioned A Journal, which 
was published on her return from this country 
to London. It is a clever, gossipping book, 
with such absurdities of opinion as might have 
been expected from a commentator on national 
character of her age and position : very amus- 
ing and very harmless. 



THE PRAYER OF A LONELY HEART. 

I AM alone — Oh be thou near to me, 
Great God! from whom the meanest are not far. 
Not in presumption of the daring spirit, 
Striving to find the secrets of itself, 
Make I my weeping prayer; in the deep want 
Of utter loneUness, my God ! I seek thee ; 
If tlie worm may creep up to thy fellowship, 
Or dust, instinct with yearning, rise towards thee. 
I have no fellow, Father ! of my kind ; 
None that be kindred, none companion to me, 
And the vast love, and harmony, and brotherhood, 
Of the dumb creatures thou hast made below me, 
Vexes my soul with its own bitter lot. 
Around me grow the trees, each by the other; 
Innumerable leaves, each like the other, 
Whisper and breathe, and live and move together. 
Around me spring the flov\'ers; each rosy cup 
Hath sisters leaning their fair cheeks against it. 
The birds fly all above me ; not alone, 
But coupled in free fellowship, or mustering 
A joyous band, sweeping in companies 
The wide blue fields between the clouds; — the clouds 
Troop in society, each on the other 
Shedding, like sympathy, reflected light. 
The waves, a multitude, together run 
To the great breast of the receiving sea : 
Nothing but hath its kind, its company, 
O God ! save I alone ! — then, let me come, 
Good Father I to thy feet; when, even as now. 
Tears, that no human hand is near to wipe, 
O'erbrim my eyes, oh wipe them, thou, my Father! 
When in my heart the stores of its afleclions. 
Piled up unused, lock'd fast, are like to burst 



The fleshly casket, that may not contain them. 
Let me come nigh to thee ; — accept them thou, 
Dear Father! — Fountof love! Compassionate God! 
When in my spirit burns the fire, the power 
That have made men utter the words of angels, 
And none are near to liid me speak and live: 
Hearken, O Father ! Maker of my spirit ! 
God of my soul, to thee I will outpour 
The hymns resounding through my troubled mind, 
The sighs and sorrows of my lonely heart, 
The tears and weeping of my weaiy eyes : 
Be thou my fellow, glorious, gracious God ! 
And fit me for such fellowship with thee ! 



ON A FORnET-:\IE-NOT, 

BROUGHr FROM SWITZERLAND. 

Flowkh of the mountain ! by the wanderer's hand 
Rohb'd of thy beauty's short-lived sunny day ; 
Didst thou but blow to gem the stranger's way, 
And bloom to wither in the stranger's land"! 
Hueless and scentless as thou art. 

How much that stirs the memory, 
How much, much more, that thrills the heart, 
Thou faded thing, yet lives in thee ! 
Where is thy beauty ! in the grassy blade [now ; 
There lives more fragrance and more freshness 
Yet oh ! not all the flowers that bloom and fade 
Are half so dear to memory's eye as thou. 
The dew that on the mountain lies, 
The breeze that o'er the mountain sighs, 

Thy parent stem will nurse and nourish ; 
But thou — not e'en those sunny eyes. 
As bright, as blue as thine own skies. 

Thou faded thing ! can make thee flourish. 
2R 469 



470 



FRANCES KEMBLE BUTLER. 



ON A MUSIC A.L BOX. 

Poon little sprite ! in that dark, narrow cell 

Caged by the law of man's resistless might ! 
With thy sweet, liquid notes, by some strong spell, 

Compell'd to minister to his delight, 
Whence, what art thoul art thou a fairy wight 

Caught sleeping in some lily's snowy bell, 
Where thou hadst crept, to rock in the moonlight, 

And drink the starry dew-drops as they fell ] 
Say, dost thou think, sometimes when thou art 
singing, 

Of thy wild haunt upon the mountain's brow. 
Where thou wert wont to list the heath-bells ringing, 

And sail upon the sunset's amber glow? 
When thou art weary of thy oft-told theme, 
Say, dost thou think of the clear pebbly stream. 

Upon whose mossy brink thy fellows play. 
Dancing in circles by the moon's soft beam, 
Hiding in blossoms from the sun's fierce gleam, 

Whilst thou in darkness sing'st thy life away. 
And canst thou feel when the spring-time returns. 

Filling the earth with fragrance and with glee ; 
When in the wide creation nothing mourns. 

Of all that lives, save that which is not free? 
Oh ! if thou couldst, and we could hear thy prayer. 

How would thy little voice beseeching cry. 
For one short draught of the sweet morning air, 

For one short glimpse of the clear, azure sky ! 
Perchance thou sing'st in hopes thou shalt be free. 

Sweetly and patiently thy task fulfilling ; 
While thy sad thoughts arc wandering with the bee, 

To every bud vi'ith honey-dew distilling. 
That hope is vain : for even couldst thou wing 

Thy homeward flight back to the greenwood gay, 
Thou'st be a shunn'd and a forsaken thing, 

'Mongst the companions of thy happier day. 
For fairy sprites, like many other creatures. 

Bear fleeting memories, that come and go ; 
Nor can they oft recall familiar features. 

By absence touch'd, or clouded o'er with wo. 
Then rest content with sorrow : for there be 
Many that must that lesson learn with thee ; 
And still thy wild notes warble cheerfully. 
Till, when thy tiny voice begins to fail, 
For thy lost bliss sing but one parting wail. 
Poor little sprite ! and then sleep peacefully ! 



A WISH. 

On ! that I were a fairy sprite to wander 
In forest paths, o'erarch'd with oak and beech ; 
Where the sun's yellow light, in slanting rays, 
Sleeps on the dewy moss ; what time the breath 
Of early morn stirs the white hawthorn boughs, 
And fills the air with showers of snowy blossoms. 
Or lie at sunset mid the purple heather. 
Listening the silver music that rings out 
From the pale mountain bells, sway'd by the wind. 
Or sit in rocky clefts above the sea. 
While one by one the evening stars sliine forth 
Among the gathering clouds, that strew the heavens 
Like floating purple wreaths of mournful night- 
shade ! 



LINES 

WRITTEN IN LONDON. 

Strurole not with thy life ! — the heavy doom 
Resist not, it will bow thee like a slave: 

Strive not ! thou shalt not conquer ; to thy tomb 
Thou shalt go crush'd and ground, though ne'er 
so brave. 

Complain not of thy life ! — for what art thou 
More than thy fellows, that thou should'st not 
weep ] 

Brave thoughts still lodge beneath a furrow'd brow, 
And the way-wearied have the sweetest sleep. 

Marvel not at thy life I — patience shall see 
The perfect work of wisdom to her given ; 

Hold fast thy soul through this high mystery, 
And it shall lead thee to the gates of heaven. 



FRAGMENT. 

Walking by moonlight on the golden margin 
That binds the silver sea, I fell to thinking 
Of all the wild imaginings that man 
Hath peopled heaven, and earth, and ocean with; 
Making fair nature's solitary haunts 
Alive with beings, beautiful and fearful. 
And as the chain of thought grew, link by link, 
It seem'd as though the midnight heavens wax'd 

brighter. 
The stars gazed fix'dly with their golden eyes, 
And a strange light play'd o'er each sleeping billow, 
That laid, its head upon the sandy beach. 
Anon there came along the rocky shore 
A far-off sound of sweetest minstrelsy. 
From no one point of heaven or earth it came ; 
But under, over, and about it breathed; 
Filling my soul with thrilling, fearful pleasure. 
It swell'd, as though borne on the floating wings 
Of the midsummer breeze ; it died away 
Towards heaven, as though it sank into the clouds, 
That one by one melted like flakes of snow 
In the moonbeams. Then came a rushing sound. 
Like countless wings of bees, or butterflies ; 
And suddenly, as far as eye might view, 
The coast was peopled with a world of elves, 
Who in fantastic ringlets danced around. 
With antic gestures, and wild beckoning motion, 
Aimed at the moon. White was their snowy vesture, 
And shining as the Alps, when that the s-un 
Gems their pale robes with diamonds. On their 

heads 
Were wreaths of crimson and of yellow foxglove. 
They were all fair, and light as dreams. Anon 
The dance broke off; and sailing through the air. 
Some one way, and some other, they did each 
Alight upon some waving branch or flower 
That garlanded the rocks upon the shore. 
One, chiefly did I mark ; one tiny sprite. 
Who crept into an orange flower-bell. 
And there lay nestling, whilst his eager lips 
Drunk from its virgin chalice the night dew, 
That glisten'd, like a pearl, in its white bosom. 



FRANCES KEMBLE BUTLER. 



471 



THE VISION OF LIFE. 

Death and I 

On a hill so high 
Stood side by side, 

And we saw below, 

Running to and fro, 
All things that be in the world so wide. 

Ten thousand cries 

From the gulf did rise. 
With a wild, discordant sound ; 

Laughter and wailing, 

Prayer and railing, 
As the ball spun round and round. 

And over all 

Hung a floating pall 
Of dark and gory veils : 

'Tis the blood of years, 

And the sighs and tears 
Which this noisome marsh exhales. 

All this did seem 

Like a fearful dream. 
Till Death cried, with a joyful cry : 

" Look down ! look down ! 

It is all mine own. 
Here comes life's pageant by !" 

Tjike to a masque in ancient revelries, 
With mingling sound of thousand harmonies, 
Soft lute and viol, trumpet-blast and gong. 
They came along, and still they came along ! 
Thousands, and tens of thousands, all {hat e'er 

Peopled the earth orplough'd theunfathom'd deep, 
All that now breathe the universal air. 

And all that in the womb of time yet sleep. 

Before this mighty host a woman came. 

With hurried feet and oft-averted head ; 
With accursed iighl 
' Her eyes were bright, 

And with inviting hand them on she beckoned. 
Her follow'd close, with wild acclaim, 
Her servants three : Lust, with his eye of fire, 
And burning lips, that tremble with desire. 

Pale, sunken cheek ; — and, as he stagger'd by, 
The trumpet-blast was hush'd, and there arose 

A melting strain of such soft melody 
As breathed into the soul love's ecstasies and woes. 

Loudly again the trumpet smote the air. 
The double drum did roll, and to the sky 
Bay'd war's blood-hounds, the deep artillery ; 
And Glory, 
With feet all gory. 
And dazzling eyes, rush'd by, 
Waving a flashing sword and laurel wreath, 
The pang and the inheritance of death. 

He pass'd like lightning — then ceased every sound 
Of war triumphant, and of love's sweet song, 
And all was silent. — Creeping slow alorig, 
With eager eyes that wandcr'd round and roi;nd, 
Wild, haggard mien, and meager, wasted frame, 
Bow'd to the earth, pale, starting Avarice came: 



Clutching with palsied hands his golden god, 
And tottering in the path the others trod. 
These, one by one, 
Came, and were gone : 
And after them follow'd the ceaseless stream 
Of worshippers, who with mad siiout and scream, 
Unhallow'd toil, and more unhallow'd mirth. 
Follow their mistress. Pleasure, through the earth. 
Death's eyeless sockets glared upon them all, 
And many in the train were seen to fall, 
Livid and cold, beneath his empty gaze : 

But not for this was stay'd the mighty throng, 
Nor ceased the warlike clang, or wanton lays, 

But still they rush'd — along — along — along! 



A PROMISE. 

By the pure spring, whose haimted waters flow 

Through thy sequester'd dell unto the sea. 

At sunny noon, I will appear to thee: 
Not troubling the still fount with drops of wo, 

As when I last took leave of it and thee, 
But gazing up at thee with tranquil brow, 
And eyes full of life's early happiness. 
Of strength, of hope, of joy, and tenderness. 
Beneath the shadowy tree, where thou and I 

Were wont to sit, studying the harmony 
Of gentle Shakspeare, and of Milton high. 

At sunny noon I will be heard by thee; 
Not sobbing forth each oft-repeated sound. 

As when I last falter'd them o'er to thee, 
But uttering them in the air around, 

With youth's clear, laughing voice of melody. 
On the wild shore of the eternal deep. 

Where we have stray 'd so oft, and stood so long 
Watching the mighty water's conquering sweep. 

And listening to their loud, triumphant song, 
At sunny noon, dearest! I'll be with thee; 

Not as when last I linger'd on the strand, 

Tracing our names on the inconstant sand ; 
But in each bright thing that around shall be: 
My voice shall call thee from the ocean's breast, 
Thou'lt see my hair in its bright showery crest. 
In its dark rocky depths tliou'lt see my eyes. 
My form shall he the light cloud in the skies, 
My spirit shall be with thee, warm and bright. 
And flood thee o'er with love, and life, and light. 



TO THE NIGHTINGALE. 

How passing sad ! Listen, it sings again ! 

Art thou a spirit, that amongst the boughs 
The livelong day dost chant that wondrous strain. 

Making wan Dian stoop her silver brows 
Out of the clouds to hear thee? Who shall say. 
Thou lone one ! that thy melody is gay. 
Let him come listen now to that one note 

'i'hat thou art pouring o'er and o'er again 
Through the sweet echoes of thy mellow throat, 

With such a sobbing sound of deep, deep pain. 
I prithee cease thy song ! for from my heart 
Thou hast made memory's bitter waters start. 

And fill'd my weary eyes with the soul's rain. 



472 



FRANCES KEMBLE BUTLER. 



WRITTEN AFTER LEAVING WEST 
POINT. 

The hours are pcu^t, love, 
Oh, fled they not loo fast, love ! 
Those happy hours, when down the mountain-side 
We saw the rosy mists of morninj glide, 
And, hand in hand, went forth upon our way, 
Full of young life and hope, to meet the day. 

The hours are past, love, 
Oh, fled they not too fast, love ! 
Those sunny hours, when from the midday heat 
We sought the waterfall with loitering feet. 
And o'er the rocks that lock the gleaming pool, 
Crept down into its depths, so dark and cool. 

The hours are past, love. 
Oh, fled they not too fast, love ! 
Those solemn hours, when through the violet sky, 

Alike without a cloud, without a ray, 
The round red autumn moon came glowingly, 
While o'er the leaden waves our boat made way. 

The hours are past, love. 
Oh, fled they not too fast, love ! 
Those blessed hours when the bright day was past, 

And in the world we scem'd to wake alone, 

When heart to heart beat throbbingly and fast, 

And love was melting our two souls in one. 



TO A PICTURE. 

SERIOUS eyes* how is it that the light. 

The burning rays, that mine pour into ye. 
Still find ye cold, and dead, and dark as night — 

O lifeless eyes ! can ye not answer me ? 
O lips! whereon mine own so often dwell. 
Hath love's warm, fearful, thrilling touch no spell 
To waken sense in ye ? — O misery ! — 

breathless lips ! can ye not speak to me 1 
Thou soulless mimicry of life ; my tears 

Fall scalding over thee ; in vain, in vain ; 

1 press thee to my heart, whose hopes and fears 

Are all thine own ; thou dost not feel the strain. 
O thou dull image ! wilt thou not reply 
To my fond prayers and wild idolatry ? 



SONNET. 

There's not a fibre in my trembling frame 

That does not vibrate when thy step draws near. 
There's not a pulse that throbs not when I hear 

Thy voice, thy breathing, nay, thy very name. 

When thou art with me every sense seems dull, 
And all I am, or know, or feel, is thee ; 

My soul grows faint, my veins run liquid flame, 

And my bewilder'd spirit seems to swim 
In eddying whirls of passion, dizzily. 

When thou art gone there creeps into my heart 
A cold and bitter consciousness of pain: 

The light, the warmth of life, wiih thee depart. 
And I sit dreaming o'er and o'er again 

Thy greeting clasp, thy parting look and tone ; 

And suddenly I wake — and am alone. 



AMBITION. 

Thou poisonous laurel leaf, that in the soil 

Of life, which I am doom'd to till full sore, 
Spring'st like a noisome weed ! I do not toil 

For thee, and yet thou still com'st darkening o'er 

My plot of earth with thy unwelcome shade. 

Thou nightshade of the soul, beneath whose boughs 

All fair and gentle buds hang withering. 
Why hast thou wreath'd thj'self around my brows, 

Casting from thence the blossoms of my spring, 
Breathing on youth's sweet roses till they fadel 
Alas ! thou art an evil weed of wo, 

Water'd with tears and watch'd with sleeplesscare; 

Seldom doth envy thy green glories spare ; 
And yet men covet thee — ah, wherefore do they so! 



TO . 

Oh ! turn those eyes away from me ! 

Though sweet, yet fearful are their rays; 
And though they beam so tenderly, 

I feel, I tremble 'neath their gaze. 
Oh, turn those eyes away ! for though 

To meet their glance I may not dare, 
I know their light is on my brow 

By the warm blood that mantles there. 



VENICE. 

Night in her dark array 
" Steals o'er the ocean. 
And with departed day 

Hush'd seems its motio! 
Slowly o'er yon blue coast 

Onward she's treading. 
Till its dark line is lost, 

'Neath her veil spreading. 
The bark on the. rippling deep 

Halh found a pillow. 
And the pale moonbeams sleep 

On the green billow. 
Bound by her emerald zone 

Venice is lying. 
And ro'.md her marble crown 

Night winds are sighing. 
From the high lattice now 

Bright eyes are gleaming, 
That seem on night's dark brow, 

Brighter stars beaming. 
Now o'er the blue lagune 

Light barks are dancing. 
And 'neath the silver moon 

Swift oars are glancing. 
Strains from the mandolin 

Steal o'er the water. 
Echo replies between 

To mirth and laughter. 
O'er the wave seen afar, 

Brilliantly shining. 
Gleams like a fallen star 

Venice reclining. 



RICHARD MONO K TON MILNE S. 



Richard Monckton Milnes is a native of 
Yorkshire, and was born about the year 180G. 
On the completion of his education at Cam- 
bridge he travelled a considerable time on the 
Continent, and soon after his return home was 
elected a member of the House of Commons, 
for Pontefract. He has voted in Parliament 
with the Tories, but has won little distinction 
as a politician. 

The poetical works of Mr. Milnes are Me- 
morials of a Tour in Greece, published in 
1834, Poems of Many Years, in 1838, Poetry 
for the People, in 1840, and Palm Leaves, in 
1844. The last volume was written during 
a tour through Egypt and the Levant in 1842 
and 1843, and is an attempt to instruct the 
western world in oriental modes of thought 
and feeling, by a series of poems in the orien- 
tal spirit, — not an unsuccessful effort, but one 
with precedents, both in Eingland and on the 
Continent. A complete edition of his writings, 
in four volumes, has recently been published 
in London by Mr. Moxon. I believe none of 
them have been reprinted in this country. 



In Leucas, one of his earlier productions, 
Mr. Milnes discloses his poetical theory. 
Reproaching Sappho, he says, — 

"Poesy, which in chaste rrpose abides, 
As in its atmospheric; that placid iluvver 
Thou hast exposed to passion's fiery tides."' 

With him poetry is the expression of beauty, 
not of passion, and no one more fully realizes 
his own ideal in his works, which are serene 
and contemplative, and pervaded by a true 
and genial philosophy. They are unequal, 
but there is about them that indescribable 
charm which indicates genuineness of feeling. 
This is particularly observable in the pieces 
having reference to the affections. The sim- 
plicity of the incidents portraj'ed, and the 
seeming artlessness of the diction, sometimes 
remind us of Wordsworth, but there is a 
point and meaning in his effusions which 
makes him occasionally superior to the author 
of the Excursion in pathos, however much he 
may at times fall below him in philosophical 
sentiment. Probably no one among the younger 
poets of England has founded a more enduring 
or more enviable reputation. 



LONELY MATURITY. 

Whkx from the key-stone of the arch of life 
Man his ascent with earnest eyes surveys. 

Sums and divides the steps of peace and strife, 
And numbers o'er his good and evil days, — 

If then, as well may be, he stand alone. 

How will his "heart recall the youthful throng. 

Who leap'd with helping hands from stone to stone, 
And cheer'd the progress vvith their choral song ! 

How will sad memory point where, here and there, 
Friend after friend, by falsehood or by fate. 

From him or from each other jiarted were, 

And love sometimes become the nurse of hate. 

Yet at this hour no feelings dark or fierce, 
No harsh desire to punish or condemn, 

Through the grave silence of the past can pierce, — 
Reproach, if such there be, is not fur them. 

Rather, he thinks, he held not duly dear 

Love, the best gift that man on man bestows. 

While round his downward path, recluse and drear, 
He feels the chill, indifferent shadows close. 

Old limbs, once broken, hardly knit together, — 
Seldom old hearts with other hearts combine ; 

Suspicion coarsely weighs the fancy's feather ; 
Experience tests and mars the sense divine ; 
60 



Thus now, though ever loth to underprize 
Youth's sacred passions and delicious tears, 

Still wortliier seems to his reflective eyes 
The friendship that sustains maturer years. 

"Why did I not," his spirit murmurs deep, 
"At every cost of momentary pride. 

Preserve the love for which in vain I weep; 
Why had I wish, or ho{)e, or sense beside? 

"Oh cruel issue of some selfish thought! 

Oh long, long echo of some angry tone ! 
Oh fruitless lesson, mercilessly taught, 

Alone to linger and to die alone ! 

"No one again upon my breast to fall, 

To name me by my common Christian name, — 

No one in mutual banter to recall 

Some youthful folly or some boyish game ; 

" No one with whom to reckon and compare 
The good we won or miss'd ; no one to draw 

Excuses from past circumstance or care, 
And mitigate the world's unreasoning law ! 

" Were I one moment with that presence blest, 
I would o'erwhclm him with my humble pain, 

I would invade the soul I once possest, 
And once for all my ancient love regain !" 
2Ra 473 



474 



RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 



THE LAY OF THE HUMBLE. 

I HAVE no comeliness of frame, 

No pleasant range of feature ; 
I'm feeble, as when first I came 

To earth, a weeping- creature ; 
My voice is low whene'er I speak, 

And singing faint my song; 
But though thus cast among the weak, 

I envy not the strong. 

The trivial part in life I [)lav 

Can have so liglit a hearing 
On other men, who, night or day. 

For me are never caring; 
That, though I find not much to bless, 

Nor food for exaltation, 
I know that I am tempted less, — 

And that is consolation. 

The beautiful ! the noble blood ! 

I shrink as they pass by, — 
Such power for evil or for good 

Is flashing from each eye ; 
They are indeed the stewards of Heaven, 

High-headed and strong-handed : 
From those, to whom so much is given, 

How much may be demanded ! 

'Tis true, I am hard bufietted, 

Though few can be my foes. 
Harsh words fall heavy on my head, 

And unresisted blows ; 
But then I think, " had I been born, — 

Hot spirit — sturdy frame — 
And passion prompt to follow scorn, — 

I might have done the same." 

To me men are for what they are, 

They wear no masks with me ; 
I never sicken'd at the jar 

Of ill-tuned flattery ; 
I never mourn'd aflections lent 

In folly or in blindness; — 
The kindness that on me is spent 

Is pure, unasking kindness. 

And most of all, I never felt 

The agonizing sense 
Of seeing love from passion melt 

Into indirt'erence ; 
The fearful shame, that day by day 

Burns onward, still to burn. 
To have thrown your precious heart away, 

And met this black return. 

I almost fancy that the more 

I am cast out from men, 
Nature has made me of her store 

A worthier denizen ; 
As if it pleased her to caress 

A plant grown up so wild, 
As if the being parentless 

Made me the more her child. 

Athwart my face when blushes pass 

To be so poor and weak, 
I fall into the dewy grass. 

And cool my fever'd cheek ; 



And hear a music strangely made, 

That you have never heard, 
A sprite in every rustling blade, 

That sings like any bird. 

My dreams are dreams of pleasantness, — 

But yet I always run. 
As to a father's morning kiss, 

When rises the round sun ; 
I see the flowers on stalk and stem, 

Light shrubs, and poplars tall. 
Enjoy the breeze, — I rock with them, — 

We're merry brothers all. 

I do remember well, when first 

I saw the great blue sea,^ 
It was no stranger-face, that burst 

In terror upon me ; 
My heart began, from the first glance. 

His solemn pulse to follow ; 
I danced with every billow's dance, 

And shouted to their hollo. 

The lamb that at it's mother's side 

Keclines, a tremulous thing, 
The robin in cold winter-tide, 

The linnet in the spring. 
All seem to be of kin to me, 

And love my slender hand, — 
For we are bound, by God's decree, 

In one defensive band. 

And children, who the worldly mind 

And ways have not put on, 
Are ever glad in me to find 

A blithe companion: 
And when for play they leave their homes, 

Left to their own sweet glee, 
They hear my step, and cry, "He comes, 

Our little friend, — 'tis he." 

Have you been out some starry night, 

And found it joy to bend 
Your eyes to one particular light. 

Till it became a friend ! 
And then, so loved that glistening spot, 

That, whether it were far 
Or more or less, it matter'd not, — 

It still was your own star. 

Thus, and thus only, can you know. 

How I, even scorned I, 
Can live in love, though set so low, 

And my ladic-love so high; 
Thus learn, that on this varied ball, 

Whate'er can breathe and move. 
The meanest, lornest thing of all — 

Still owns its right to love. 

With no fair round of household cares 

Will my lone heart be blest. 
Never the snow of my old hairs 

Will touch a loving breast; 
No darling pledge of spousal faith 

Shall I he found possessing, 
To whom a blessing with my breath 

Would be a double blessing: 



RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 



475 



But yet my love with sweets is rife, 

With happiness it teems, 
It beautifies my waking life, 

And waits upon my dreams ; 
A shape that floats upon the night, 

Like foam upon the sea, — 
A voice of seraphim, — a light 

Of present Deity ! 

I hide me in the dark arcade, 

When she walks forth alone, — 
I feast upon her hair's rich braid, — 

Her half-unclasped zone : 
I watch the flittings of her dress. 

The bending boughs between, — 
I trace her footsteps' faery press, 

On the scarcely ruffled green. 

Oh deep delight I the frail guitar 

Trembles beneath her hand. 
She sings a song she brought from far, 

I cannot understand ; 
Her voice is always as from heaven, 

But yet I seem to hear 
Its music best, when thus 'tis given 

All music to my ear. 

She has turn'd her tender eyes around. 

And seen me crouching there, 
And smiles, just as that last full sound 

Is fainting -on the air; 
And now, I can go forth so proud, 

And raise my head so tall, — 
My heart within me beats so loud. 

And musical withal : — 

And there is summer all the while. 

Mid-winter though it be, — 
How should the universe not smile. 

When she has smiled on mel 
For though that smile can nothing more 

Than merest pity prove. 
Yet pity, it was sung of yore, 

Is not so far from love. 

From what a crowd of lovers' woes 

My weakness is exempt ! 
How far more fortunate than those 

Who mark me for contempt ! 
No fear of rival happiness 

My fervent glory smothers, 
The zephyr fans me none the less 

That is so bland to others. 

Thus without share in coin or land, 

But well content to hold 
The wealth of nature in my hand, 

One flail of virgin gold, — 
My love above me like a sun, — 

My own bright thoughts my wings, — 
Through life I trust to flutter on. 

As gay as aught that sings. 

One hour I own I dread, — to die 

Alone and unbefriended, — 
No soothing voire, no tearful eye, — 

But that must soon be ended ; 



And then I shall receive my part 

Of everlasting treasure, 
In that just world where each man's heart 

Will be his only measure. 



ON . 

Gkntly supported by the ready aid 

Of loving hands, whose little work of toil 
Her grateful prodigality repaid 

With all the benediction of her smile, 
She turn'd her failing feet 
To the soft pillow'd seat. 
Dispensing kindly greetings all the while. 

Before the tranquil beauty of her face 

I bow'd in spirit, thinking that she were 
A suffering angel, whom the special grace 
Of God intrusted to our pious care, 
'J'hat we might learn from her 
The art to ininister 
To heavenly beings in seraphic air. 

There seem'd to lie a weight upon her brain, 

That everpress'd herblue-vein'd eyelids down, 
But could not dim her lustrous eyes with pain. 
Nor seem her forehead with the faintest frown : 
She was as she were proud, 
So young, to be allow'd 
To follow Him who wore the thorny crown. 

Nor was she sad, but over every mood. 

To which her lightly-pliant mind gave birth, 
Gracefully changing, did a spirit brood. 
Of quiet gaiety, and serenest mirth ; 
And thus her voice did flow, 
So beautifully low, 
A stream whose music was no thing of earth. 

Now long that instrument has ceased to sound, 
Now long that gracious form in earth has lain 
Tended by nature only, and unwound 

Are all those mingled threads of love and pain; 
So let me weep and bend 
My head, and wait the end. 
Knowing that God creates not thus in vain. 



PRAYER. 

Is reverence will we speak of those that woo 
The ear Divine with clear and ready prayer ; 
And, while their voices cleave the Sabbath air. 

Know their bright thoughts are winging heaven- 
ward too. 

Yet many a one — " the latchet of whose shoe" 
These might not loose — will often only dare 
Lay some poor words between him and despair — 

" Father, forgive ! we know not what we do." 
For, as Christ pray'd, so echoes our weak heart, 

Yearning the ways of God to vindicate. 

But worn and wilder'd by the shows of fate, 

Of good oppress'd and beautiful defiled. 
Dim alien force, that draws or holds apart 

From its dear home that wandering spirit-child. 



476 



RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 



NOT WHOLLY JUST. 

The words that trembled on your lips 

Were utter'd not — I know it well ; 
The tears that would your eyes eclipse 

Were check'd and smother'd ere they fell: 
The looks and smiles I gain'd from you 

Were little more than others won, 
And yet you are not wholly true, 

Nor wholly just what you have done. 

You know, at least you might have known, 

That every little grace you gave, — 
Your voice's somewhat lovver'd tone, — 

Your hand's faint shake or parting wave, — 
Your every sympathetic look 

At words that chanced your soul to touch, 
While reading from some favourite book, 

Were much to me — alas, how much ! 

You might have seen — perhaps you saw — 

How all of these were steps of hope 
On which I rose, in joy and awe. 

Up to my passion's lofty scope ; 
How after each, a firmer tread 

I planted on the slippery ground. 
And higher raised my venturous head, 

And ever new assurance found. 

May be, without a further thought, 

It only pleased you thus to please. 
And thus to kindly feelings wrought 

You measured not the sweet degrees ; 
Yet, though you hardly understood 

Where I was following at your call. 
You might — I dare to say you should — 

Have thought how far I had to fall. 

And thus when fallen, faint, and bruised, 

I see another's glad success, 
I may have wrongfully accused 

Your heart of vulgar fickleness: 
But even now, in calm review 

Of all I lost and all I won, 
I cannot deem you wholly true. 

Nor wholly just what you have done. 



THE PALSY OF THE HEART. 

I SEE the worlds of earth and sky 

With beauty filled to overflow; 
My spirit lags behind the eye — 

I know, but feel not as I know: 
Those miracles of form and hue 

I can dissect with artist skill. 
But more than this I cannot do, — 

Enjoyment rests beyond the will. 

Round me in rich profusion lie 

Nectareous fruits of ancient mind. 
The thoughts that have no power to die 

In golden poesy enshrined : 
And near me hang, of later birth, 

Ripe clusters from the living tree, 
But what the pleasure, what the worth 

If all is savourless to me 1 



I hear the subtle chords of sound. 

Entangled, loosed, and knit anew; 
The music floats without — around — 

But will not enter and imbue: 
While harmonies diviner still, 

Sweet greetings, appellations dear, 
That used through every nerve to thrill, 

I often hear, and only hear. 

O dreadful thought I if by God's grace 

To souls like mine there should be given 
That perfect presence of his face. 

Which we, for want of words, call heaven,- 
And unresponsive even there 

This heart of mine could still remain, 
And its intrinsic evil bear 

To realms that know no other pain. 

Better down nature's scale to roll. 

Far as the base, unbreathing clod. 
Then rest a conscious reasoning soul, 

Impervious to the light of God ; — 
Hateful the powers that but divine 

What we have lost beyond recall, 
The intellectual plummet-line 

That sounds the depths to which we fall. 



A PRAYER. 

Evil, every living hour. 

Holds us in its wilful hand. 
Save as thou, essential Power, 

May'st be gracious to withstand : 
Pain within the subtle flesh. 

Heavy lids that cannot close. 
Hearts that hope will not refresh, — 

Hand of healing ! interpose. 

Tyranny's strong breath is tainting 

Nature's sweet and vivid air. 
Nations silently are fainting, 

Or up-gather in despair : 
Not to those distracted vs'ills 

Trust the judgment of their woes ; 
While the cup of anguish fills. 

Arm of Justice ! interpose. 

Pleasures night and day are hovering 

Round their prey of weary hours, 
Weakness and unrest discovering 

In the best of human powers : 
Ere the fond delusions tire. 

Ere envenorn'd passion grows 
From the root of vain desire, — 

Mind of W^isdom ! interpose. 

Now no more in tuneful motion 

Life with love and duty glides ; 
Reasort's meteor-lighted ocean 

Bears us down its mazy tides ; 
Head is clear and hand is strong, 

But our heart no haven knows ; 
Sun of Truth ! the night is long, — 

Let thy radiance interpose. 



RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 



477 



YOUTH AND MANHOOD. 

Youth, that puvsuest with such eager pace 

Thy fven way, 
Thou pantest on to win a mournful race : 

Then stay ! oh, stay I 

Pause and luxuriate in thy sunny plain ; 

Loiter, — enjoy : 
Once past, thou never wilt come back again 

A second boy. 

The hills of manhood wear a noble face, 

When seen from far ; 
The mist of light from which they take their grace 

Hides what tiiey are. 

The dark and weary path those cliffs between 

Thou canst not know. 
And how it leads to regions never-green, 

Dead lields of snow. 

Pause, while thou may st, nor deem that fate thy gain, 

Which, all too fast, 
Will drive thee forth from this delicious plain, 

A man at last. 



PAST FRIENDSHIP. 

Wk that were friends, yet are not now, 

We that must daily meet. 
With ready words and courteous bow 

Acquaintance of the street ; 
We must not scorn the holy past, 

We must remember still 
To honour feelings that outlast 

The reason and the will. 

I might reprove thy broken faith, 

I might recall the time 
When thou wert charter'd mine till death, 

Through every fate and clime; 
When every letter was a vow. 

And fancy was not free 
To dream of ended love ; and thou 

Wouldst say the same of me. 

No. no, 'tis not for us to trim 

The balance of our wrongs. 
Enough to leave remorse to him 

To whom remorse belongs ! 
Let our dead friendship be to us 

A desecrated name, 
Unutterable, mysterious, 

A sorrow and a shame. 

A sorrow that two souls which grew 

Encased in mutual bliss. 
Should wander, callous strangers, through 

So cold a world as this ! 
A shame that we, whose hearts had carn'd 

For life an early heaven, 
ShoTiid be like angels self-return'd 

To death, when once forgiven ! 

liCt us remain as living signs, 
W!)ere they that run may read 

Pain and disgrace in many lines, 
As of a loss indeed ; 



That of our fellows any, who 
The prize of love have won. 

May tremble at the thought to do 
The thing that we have done ! 



DELPHI.— AN ELEGY. 

Bexf.ath the vintage moon's uncertain light. 
And some faint stars that pierced the film of cloud. 

Stood those Parnassian peaks before my sight. 
Whose fame throughout the ancient world was 
loud. 

Still could I dimly trace the terraced lines 
Diverging from the clilFs on either side ; 

A theatre whose steps were fill'd with shrines 
And rich devices of Hellenic pride ; 

Though brightest daylight would have lit in vain 
The place whence gods and worshippers had fled; 

Only, and they too tenantless, remain 

The hallow'd chambers of the pious dead. 

Yet those wise architects an ample part 
To nature gave in their religious shows, 

And thus, amid the sepultures of art, 

Still rise the rocks and still the fountain flows. 

Desolate Delphi ! pure Castalian spring ! 

Hear me avow that I am not as they — 
Who deem that all about you ministering 

Were base impostors, and mankind their prey ; 

That the high names they seem'ito love and laud 
Were but the tools their paltry trade to ply ; 

This pomp of faith a mere gigantic fraud, 
The apparatus of a mighty lie ! 

Let those that will believe it; I, for one. 
Cannot thus read the history of my kind ; 

Remembering all this little Greece has done 
To raise the universal human mind : 

I know that hierarchs of that wondrous race, 
By their own faith alone, could keep alive 

Mysterious rites and sanctity of place, — 
Believing in whate'er they might contrive. 

It may be, that these influences, combined 
With such rare nature as the jiriestess bore, 

Brought to the surface of her stormy mind 
Distracted fragments of prophetic lore : 

For, howsoe'er to mortals' probing view 
Creation is reveal'd, yet must we pause, 

Weak to dissect the futile from the true. 
Where'er imagination spreads her laws. 

So now that dimmer grows the watery light. 
And things each moment more fantastic seem, 

I fain would seek if still the gods have miaht 
Over the undissembling world of dream; 

I ask not that for me aside be cast 

The solemn veil that hides what is decreed ; 

I crave the resurrection of the yiast. 

That I may know what Delphi was indeed ! 



478 



RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 



THE PATIENCE OF THE POOR. 

When leisurely the man of ease 

His morning's daily course begins, 
And round him in bright circle sees 

The comforts independence wins, 
He seems unto himself to hold 

An uncontested natural right, 
In life a volume to unfold, 

Of simple ever-new delight. 

And if, before the evening close, 

The hours their rainbow wings let fall, 
And sorrow shakes his bland repose. 

And too continuous pleasures pall. 
He murmurs, as if nature broke 

Some promise plighted at his birth. 
In bending him beneath the yoke 

Borne by the common sons of earth. 

They starve beside his plenteous board, 

They halt behind his easy wheels ; 
But sympathy in vain affords 

The sense of ills he never feels. 
He knows he is the same as they, 

A feeble, piteous, mortal thing. 
And still expects that every day 

Increase and change of bliss should bring. 

Therefore, when he is called to know 

The deep realities of pain, 
He shrinks as from a viewless blow. 

He writhes as in a magic chain : 
Untaught that trial, toil, and care, 

Are the great charter of his kind, 
It seems disgrace for him to share 

Weakness of flesh and human mind. 

Not so the people's honest child, 

The field-flower of the open sky, 
Ready to live while winds are wild, 

Nor, when they soften, loath to die ; 
To him there never came the thought 

That this, his life, was meant to be 
A pleasure-house, where peace unbought 

Should minister to pride or glee. 

You oft may hear him murmur loud 

Against the uneven lots of Fate, 
You oft may see him inly bow'd 

Beneath affliction's weight on weight: — 
But rarely turns he on his grief 

A face of petulant surprise. 
Or scorns whate'er benign relief 

The hand of God or man supplies. 

Behold him on his rustic bed 

The unluxurious couch of need, 
Striving to raise his aching head, 

And sinking powerless as a reed : 
So sick in both, he hardly knows 

Which is his heart's or body's sore, 
For the more keen his anguish grows. 

His wife and children pine the more. 

No search for him of dainty food, 
But coarsest sustenance of life, — 

No rest by artful quiet wooed, 

But household cries, and wants, and strife; 



AflTection can at best employ 
Her utmost of unhandy care. 

Her prayers and tears are weak to buy 
The costly drug, the purer air. 

Pity herself, at such a sight, 

Might lose her gentleness of mein. 
And clothe her form in angry might, 

And as a wild despair be seen ; 
Did she not hail the lesson taught 

By this unconscious suffering boor. 
To the high sons of lore and thought, 

— The sacred patience of the poor. 

— This great endurance of each ill. 

As a plain fact whose right or wrong 
They question not, confiding still. 

That it shall last not overlong; 
Willing from first to last to take 

The mysteries of our life as given, 
Leaving the time-worn soul to slake 

Its thirst in an undoubted heaven. 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE LAC DE GAUBE 
IN THE PYRENEES. 

The marriage blessing on their brows, 

Across the Channel seas 
And lands of gay Garonne, they reach 

The pleasant Pyrenees : — 
He, into boyhood born again, 

A son of joy and life, — 
And she a happy English girl, 

A happier English wife. 

They loiter not where Argeles, 

The chestnut-crested plain 
Unfolds its robe of green and gold 

In pasture, grape, and grain ; 
But on and up, where nature's heart 

Beats strong amid the hills. 
They pause, contented with the wealth 

That either bosom fills. 

There is a lake, a small round lake. 

High on the mountain's breast. 
The child of rains and melted snows, 

The torrent's summer rest, — 
A mirror where the veteran rocks 

May glass their peaks and scars, 
A nether sky where breezes break 

The sunhght into stars. 

Oh ! gaily shone that little lake, 

And nature, sternly fair. 
Put on a sparkling countenance 

To greet that merry pair ; 
How light from stone to stone they leap'd, 

How trippingly they ran ; 
To scale the rock and gain the marge 

Was all a moment's span ! 

" See, dearest, this primeval boat. 

So quaint, and rough, I deem 
Just such an one did Charon ply 

Across the Stygian stream : 



RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 



479 



Step in, — I will your Charon be, 

And you a Spirit bol<l, — 
I was a famous rower once 

In college days of old. 

" The clumsy oar ! the laggard boat ! 

How slow we move along, — 
The work is harder than I thought, — 

A song, my love, a song !" 
Then, standing up, she caroH'd out 

So biythe and sweet a strain. 
That the long-silent cliffs were glad 

To peal it back again. 

He, tranced in joy, the oar laid down, 

And rose in careless pride. 
And swayed in cadence to the song 

The boat from side to side : 
Then, clasping hand in loving hand. 

They danced a childish round. 
And ff It as safe in that mid-lake 

As on the firmest ground. 

One poise too much ! — He headlong fell,- 

She, stretching out to save 
A feeble arm, was borne adown 

Within that glittering grave : — 
One moment, and the gush went forth 

Of music-mingled laughter, — 
The struggling splash and deathly shriek 

Were there the instant after. 

Her weaker head above the flood, 

That quick engulf 'd the strong, 
Like some enchanted water-flower. 

Waved pitifully long : — 
Long seem'd the low and lonely wail 

Athwart the tide to fade; 
Alas ! that there were some to hear. 

But never one to aid. 

Yet not, alas I if Heaven revered 

The freshly-spoken vow. 
And will'd that what was then made one 

Should not be sunder'd now, — 
If she was spared, by that sharp stroke. 

Love's most unnatural doom. 
The future lorn and unconsoled. 

The unavoided tomb ! 

But weep, ye very rocks ! for those, 

Who, on their native shore, 
Await the letters of dear news, 

That shall arrive no more ; 
One letter from a stranger hand, — 

Few words are all the need ; 
And then the funeral of the heart. 

The course of useless speed ! 

The presence of the cold dead wood. 

The single mark and sign 
Of her so loved and beautiful, 

That handiwork divine ! 
The weary search for his fine form 

That in the depth would linger, 
And late success, — Oh ! leave the ring 

Upon that faithful finger. 



And if in life there lie the seed 

Of real enduring being, — 
If love and truth be not decreed 

To perish unforeseeing, — 
This youth, the seal of death has stampt, 

Now time can withcjr never. 
This hope, that sorrow might have dampt. 

Is fresh and strong for ever. 



THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE. 

Who is this man whose words have might 

To lead you from your rest or care, 
Who speaks as if the earth were right 

To stop its course and listen there 1 
Where is the symbol of command 

By which he claims this lofty tone 1 
His hand is as another's hand, — 

His speech no stronger than your own. 

He bids you wonder, weep, rejoice, 

Saying, — " It is yourselves, not I ; 
I speak but with the people's voice, 

I see but with the people's eye." 

Words of imposing pride and strength. 

Words that contain, in little span. 
The secret of the heighth and length 

Of all the intelligence of man. 

Yet, brothers ! God has given to few. 

Through the long progress of our kind, 
To read with eyes undimm'd and true 

The blotted book of public mind ; 
To separate from the moment's will 

The heart's enduring real desires. 
To tell the steps of coming ill, 

And seek the good the time requires. 

These are the prophets, these the kings. 

And lawgivers of human thought. 
Who in our being's deepest springs 

The engines of their might have sought ; 
Whose utterance comes, we know not whence, 

Being no more their own than ours, 
With instantaneous evidence 

Of titles just and sacred powers. 

But bold usurpers may arise 

Of this as of another's throne ; 
Persuasion waits upon the wise, 

But waits not on the wise alone : 
An echo of your evil self 

No better than the voice can be, 
And appetites of fame or pelf 

Grow not in good as in degree. 

Then try the speaker, try the cause, 

With prudent care, as men who know 
The subtle nature of the laws 

By which our feelings ebb and flow : 
Lest virtue's void and reason's lack 

Be hid beneath a specious name. 
And on the people's helpless back 

Rest all the punishment and shame. 



480 



RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 



ALMS-GIVING. 

When^ poverty, with mein of shame, 

The sense of pity seeks to touch, — 
Or, bolder, makes the simple claim 

That I have nothing, you have much, — 
Believe not either man or book 

That bids you close the opening hand, 
And with reproving speech and look 

Your first and free intent withstand. 

It may be that the tale you hear 

Of pressing wants and losses borne 
Is heapt or colour'd for your ear, 

And tatters for the purpose worn ; 
But surely poverty has not 

A sadder need than this, to wear 
A mask still meaner than her lot. 

Compassion's scanty food to share. 

It may be that you err to give 

What will but tempt to further spoil 
Those who in low content would live 

On theft of others' time and toil ; 
Yet sickness may have broke or bent 

The active frame or vigorous will, — 
Or hard occasion may prevent 

Their exercise of humble skill. 

It may be that the suppliant's life 

Has lain on many an evil way 
Of foul delight and brutal strife, 

And lawless deeds that shun the day ; 
But how can any gauge of yours 

The depth of that temptation try ? 
— What man resists — what man endures, — 

Is open to one only eye. 

Why not believe the homely letter 

That all you give will God restore ? 
The poor man mai/ deserve it better, 

And surely, surely wants it more : 
Let but the rich man do his part, 

And whatsoe'er the issue be 
To those who ask, his answering heart 

Will gain and grow in sympathy. 

— Suppose that each from nature got 

Bare quittance of his labour's worth, 
That yearly-teeming flocks were not, 

Nor manifold-producing earth ; 
No wilding growths of fruit and flower, 

Cultured to beautiful and good. 
No creatures for the arm of power 

To take and tame from waste and wood !- 

That all men to their mortal rest 

Past shadow-like, and left behind 
No free result, no clear bequest. 

Won by their work of hand or mind ! 
That every separate life begun 

A present to the past unbound, 
A lonely, independent, one, 

Sprung from the cold mechanic ground ! 

What would the record of the past. 
The vision of the future be ] 



Nature unchanged from first to last, 
And base the best humanity : 

For in these gifts lies all the space 
Between our England's noblest men 

And the most vile Australian race 
Outprowling from their bushy den. 

Then freely as from age to age, 

Descending generations bear 
The accumulated heritage 

Of friendly and parental care. — 
Freely as nature tends her wealth 

Of air and fire, of sea and land, 
Of childhood's happiness and health, 

So freely open you your hand ! 

— Between you and your best intent 

Necessity her brazen bar 
Will often interpose, as sent 

Your pure benevolence to mar ; 
Still every gentle word has sway 

To teach the pauper's desperate mood 
That misery shall not take away 

Franchise of human brotherhood. 

And if this lesson come too late. 

Wo to the rich and poor and all ! 
The madden'd outcast of the gate 

Plunders and murders in the hall ; 
Justice can crush and hold in awe, 

While hope in social order reigns, — 
But if the myriads break the law, 

They break it as a slave his chains ! 



LABOUR. 

Hf.aut of the People ! Working men ! 

Marrow and nerve of human powers ; 
Who on your sturdy backs sustain 

Through streaming time this world of ours ; 
Hold by that title, — which proclaims 

That ye are undismay'd and strong, 
Accomplishing vvhatever aims 

May to the sons of earth belong. 

Yet not on ye alone depend 

These offices, or burdens fall ; 
Labour, for some or other end. 

Is lord and master of us all. 
The high-born youth from downy bed 

Must meet the morn with horse and hound, 
While industry for daily bread 

Pursues afresh his wonted round. 

With all his pomp of pleasure, he 

Is but your working comrade now, 
And shouts and winds his horn, as ye 

Might whistle by the loom or plough ; 
In vain for him has wealth the use 

Of warm repose and careless joy, — 
When, as ye labour to produce. 

He strives, as active, to destroy. 

But who is this with wasted frame. 
Sad sign of vigour overwrought 1 

What toil can this new victim claim 1 
Pleasure, for pleasure's sake besought. 



RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 



481 



How men would mock her flaunting shows, 
Her golden promise, if they knew 

What weary work she is to those 
Who have no better work to do ! 

And he who still and silent sits 

In closed room or shady nook, 
And seems to nurse his idle wits 

With folded arms or open book : 
To things now working in that mind 

Your children's children well may owe 
Blessings that hope has ne'er defined, 

Till from his busy thoughts they flow. 

Thus all must work : with head or hand, 

For self or others, good or ill ; 
Life is ordain'd to bear, like land, 

Some fruit, he fallow as it will : 
Evil has force itself to sow 

Where we deny the healthy seed, — 
And all our choice is this, — to grow 

Pasture and grain, or noisome weed- 
Then in content possess your hearts, 

Unenvious of each other's lot, — 
For those which seem the easiest parts 

Have travail which ye reckon not : 
And he is bravest, happiest, best. 

Who, from the task within his span, 
Earns for himself his evening rest. 

And an increase of good for man. 



THE VOICES OF HISTORY. 

Thk poet in his vigil hears 

Time flowing through the night, — 
A mighty stream, absorbing tears. 

And bearing down delight: 
There, resting on his bank of thought 

He listens, till his soul 
The voices of the waves has caught, — 

The meaning of their roll. 

First, wild and wildering as the strife 

Of earthly winds and seas. 
Resounds the long historic life 

Of warring dynasties : — 
Uncertain right and certain wrong 

In onward conflict driven, 
The threats and tramplings of the strong 

Beneath a brazen heaven. 

The cavernous unsounded East 

Outpours an evil tide, 
Drowning the hymn of patriarch priest, 

The chant of shepherd bride : 
How can we catch the angel-word, 

How mark the prophet-sound, 
Mid thunders like Niagara's, heard 

An hundred miles around 1 

From two small springs that rise and blend. 

And leave their Latin home. 
The waters East and West extend, — 

The ocean-power of Rome : 
61 



Voices of victories ever-won, 

Of pride that will not stay. 
Billows that burst and perish on 

The shores they wear away. 

Till, in a race of fierce delight. 

Tumultuous battle forth. 
The snows amast on many a height. 

The cataracts of the North : 
What can we hear beside the roar, 

What sec beneath the foam. 
What but the wrecks that strew the shore. 

And cries of falling Rome 1 

Nor, when a purer faith had traced 

Safe channels for the tide. 
Did streams with Eden-lilies graced 

In Eden-sweetness glide ; 
While the deluded gaze admires 

The smooth and shining flow, 
Vile interests and insane desires 

Gurgle and rage below. 

If history has no other sounds. 

Why should we listen more ? 
Spirit ! despise terrestrial bounds. 

And seek a happier shore ; 
Y^et pause ! for on thine inner ear 

A mystic music grows, — 
And mortal man shall never hear 

That diapason's close. 

Nature awakes ! a rapturous tone, 

Still different, still the same, — 
Eternal effluence from the throne 

Of Him without a name ; 
A symphony of worlds begun, 

Ere sin the glory mars, 
The cymbals of the new-born sun, 

The trumpets of tlie stars. 

Then beauty all her subtlest chords 

Dissolves and knits again. 
And law composes jarring words 

In one harmonious chain : 
And loyalty's enchanting notes 

Outswelling fade away. 
While knowledge, from ten thousand throats. 

Proclaims a graver sway. 

Well, if, by senses unbefool'd. 

Attentive souls may scan 
Those great ideas that have ruled 

The total mind of man ; 
Yet is there music deeper still, 

Of fine and holy woof, 
Comfort and joy to all that will 

Keep ruder noise aloof. 

A music simple as the sky, 

Monotonous as the sea, 
Recurrent as the flowers that die 

And rise again in glee ; 
A melody that childhood sings 

Without a thought of art. 
Drawn from a few familiar strings, 

The fibres of the heart. 
2S 



i 482 RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 

i 




1 

Through tent, and cot, and proud saloon, 


Thou who to this open summit 




This audible delight 


Lovest at every hour to go, 




Of nightingales that love the noon, 


Tell me, poet ! what thou seest, 




Of larks that court the night, — 


What thou hearest, there below. 




We feel it all, — the hopes and fears 


Wonder, wonder, perfect wonder ! 




That language faintly tells, 


Ocean is the city's moat; 




The spreading smiles, — the passing tears, — 


On the bosom of broad ocean 




The meetings and farewells. 


Seems the mighty weight to float : 




These harmonies that all can share, 


Seems, yet stands as strong and stable 




When chronicled by one, 


As on land e'er city shall, — 




Enclose us like the living air. 


Only moves that ocean-serpent, 




Unending, unbegun ; — 


Tide-impell'd, the great canal. 




Poet ! esteem thy noble part, 

Still listen, still record. 
Sacred historian of the heart, 


Rich arcades and statued pillars, 

Gleaming banners, burnish'd domes, — 

Ships approaching, — ships departing, — 
Countless ships in harbour-homes. 




And moral nature's lord ! 






Yet so silent! scarce a murmur 






Wing'd to reach this airy seat, 




NAPLES AND VENICE. 


Hardly from the close piazza 






Rises sound of voice or feet. 




OvKRLooKiNG, overhearing. 


Plash of oar or single laughter,^ 




Naples, and her subject bay 


Cry or song of gondolier, — 




Stands Camaldolt, the convent, 


Signals far between to tell me 




Shaded from the inclement ray. 


That the work of life is here. 




Thou, who to that lofty terrace 


Like a glorious maiden dreaming 




Lovest on summer eve to go. 


Music in the drowsy heat, 




Tell me, poet ! what thou seest, 


Lies the city, unbctokening 




What thou hearest, there below ! 


Where its myriad pulses beat. 




Beauty, beauty, perfect beauty ! 


And I think myself in cloudland, — 




Sea and city, hills and air, 


Almost try my power of will. 




Rather blest imaginations 


Whether I can change the picture. 




Than realities of fair. 


Or it must be Venice still. 




Forms of grace alike contenting. 


When the question wakes within me, 




Casual glance and steadfast gaze, 


Which hath won the crown of deed. 




Tender lights of pearl and opal 


Venice with her moveless silence, 




Mingling with the diamond blaze. 


Naples with her noisy speed 1 




Sea as is but deepen'd ether : 


Which hath writ the goodlier tablet 




AVhite as snow-wreaths sunbeshone 


For the past to hoard and show, 




Lean the palaces and temples 


Venice in her student stillness, 




Green and purple heights upon. 


Naples in her living glowl 




Streets and paths mine eye is tracing, 


Here are chronicles with virtues 




All replete with clamorous throng, 


Studded as the night with stars, — 




Where I see and where I see not 


Records there of passions raging 




Waves of uproar roll along. 


Through a wilderness of wars : 




As the sense of bees unnumher'd, 


There a tumult of ambitions, 




Burning through the walk of limes, — 


Power afloat on blood and tears, — 




As the thought of armies gathering 


Here one simple reign of wisdom 




Round a chief in ancient times, — 


Stretching thirteen hundred years : 




j So from Corso, Port, and Garden 


Self-subsisting, self-devoted. 




Rises life's tumultuous strain, 


There the moment's hero ruled, — 




Not secure from wildest utterance 


Here the state, each one subduing. 




Rests the perfect-crystal main. 


Pride enchain'd and passion school'd : 




Still the all-enclosing beauty 


Here was art the nation's mistress. 




Keeps my spirit free from harm, — 


Art of colour, art of stone, — 




Distance blends the veriest discords 


There before the leman pleasure 




Into some melodious charm. 


Bow'd the people's heart alone. 




— Overlooking, overhearing. 


Venice I vocal is thy silence. 




Venice and her sister isles. 


Can our soul but rightly hear ; 




Stands the giant Campanile, 


Naples ! dumb as death thy voices, 




Massive mid a thousand piles. 


Listen we however near. 





RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. At'S 


PASTORAL SONG. 


Mid the flowers you love the best. 




Summer pride or vernal boon — 


I WANDER'n by the brook-sitle, 


By your favourite light carest, 


I wander'd by the mill, — 


Blush of eve or glow of noon, — 


I could not hear the brook flow, 


Blend the strains of happiest da3's 


The noisy wheel was still ; 


With the voices held most dear ; 


Thgre wy no burr of grasshopper, 
No cHlrp of any bird, 


Children cast on weary ways ! 


Rest in peace and pleasaunce here. 


But the beating of my own heart 




Was all the sound I heard. 


Be the future's glorious page 




In my tones to youth reveal'd ; 


I sat beside the ehn-tree. 


Let the ruffled brow of age 


I watcht the long, long shade, 


With eternal calm be seal'd : 


And as it grew still longer, 


High as heaven's ethereal cope, 


I did not feel afraid ; 


Wide as light's rejoicing ray. 


For I listen'd for a footfall. 


Thoughts of memory ! Thoughts of hope ! 


I listen'd for a word, — 


• Wander, wander, while ye may. 


But the beating of my own heart 




Was ail the sound I heard. 
He came not, — no, he came not, — 






The night came on alone, — 


RICH AND POOR. 


The little stars sat one by one. 




Each on a golden throne ; 


Whf.n^ God built up the dome of blue. 

And portion'd earth's prolific floor. 
The measure of his wisdom drew 


The evening air past by my cheek. 
The leaves above were stirr'd, — 




But the beating of my own heart 


A line between the rich and poor ; 
And till that vault of glory fall. 


Was all the sound I heard. 


Fast silent tears were flowing, 


Or beauteous earth be scarr'd with flame. 


When something stood behind, — 


Or saving love be all in all, 


A hand was on my shoulder, 


That rule of life will rest the same. 


I knew its touch was kind : 




It drew me nearer — nearer, — 


We know not why, we know not how. 


We did not speak one word, 


Mankind are framed for weal or wo — 


For the beating of our own hearts 


But to the eternal law we bow ; 


Was all the sound we heard. 


If such things are, they must be so. 




Yet, let no cloudy dreams destroy 


, 


One truth outshining bright and clear, 
That wealth is only hope and joy. 




SONG OF THOUGHTS. 


And poverty but pain and fear. 


Let the lays from poet-lips 


Behold our children as they play ! 


Shadow forth the speech of heaven, — 


Blest creatures, fresh from nature's hand ; 


Let melodious airs eclipse 


The peasant boy as great and gay 


All delight to senses given ; 


As the young heir to gold and land ; 


Yet to these my notes and words 


Their various toys of equal worth. 


Listen with your heart alone, 


Their little needs of equal care, 


While the thought that best accords 


And halls of marble, huts of earth, 


Pilakes a music of its own. 


All homes alike endear'd and fair. 


Ye that in the fields of love 


They know no better ! would that we 


I Feel the breath and bloom of spring. 


Could keep our knowledge «afe from worse; 


While I sing, securely rove, — 


So power should find and leave us free. 


Rest in safety, while I sing. — 


So pride be but the owner's curse ; 


Ye that gaze with vain regret 


So, without marking which was which. 


Back towards that holy ground. 


Our hearts would tell, by instinct sure, 


All the world between forgot 


What paupers are the ambitious rich ! 


Spirit-rockt from sound to sound. 


How wealthy the contented poor ! 


All indifierence, all distrust. 


Grant us, God ! but health and heart. 


From old friendships pass away ! 


And strength to keep desire at bay. 


Let the faces of the just 


And ours mu.sf be the better part. 


Shine ar< in God's perfect day ! 


Whatever else besets our way. 


Fix the faintest, fleetest smile. 


Each day may bring sufficient ill ; 


E'er athwart your path has gleam'd — 


But we can me(>t and fight it through. 


Take the charm without the wile, — 


If hope sustains the hand of will. 


Be the beauty all it seem'd ! 


And conscience is our captain too. 

1 



484 



RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 



STANZAS. 

Because, from all that round thee move, 
Planets of beaut}', strength, and grace, 

I am elected to thy love, 

And have my home in thy embrace, 

I wonder all men do not see 

The crown that thou hast set on me. 

Because, when prostrate at thy feet. 
Thou didst emparadise my pain, — 

Because thy heart on mine has beat. 
Thy head within my hands has lain, 

I am transfigured, by that sign, 
Into a being like to thine. 

The mirror from its glossy plain 
Receiving still returns the light, 

And being generous of its gain. 
Augments the very solar might : 

What unreflected light would be, 

Is just thy spirit without me. 

Thou art the flame, whose rising spire 
In the dark air sublimely sways. 

And I the tempest that swift fire 
Gathers at first, and then obeys : 

All that was thine ere we were wed 

Have I by right inherited. 

Is life a stream ? Then from thy hair 
One rosebud on the current fell, 

And straight it turn'd to crystal there, 
As adamant immovable : 

Its steadfast place shall know no more 

The sense of after and before. 

Is life a plant ] The king of years 
To mine nor good nor ill can bring; — 

Mine grows no more ; no more it fears 
Even the brushing of his wing; 

With sheathed scythe I see him go, — 

I have no flowers that he can mow. 



THE FRIENDSHIP FLOWER. 

Whex first the Friendship-flower is planted 

Within the garden of your soul, 
Little of care or thought are wanted 

To guard its beauty fresh and whole; 
But when the one empassion'd age 

Has full reveal'd the magic bloom, 
A wise and holy tutelage 

Alone can shun the open tomb. 

It is not absence you should dread, — 

For absence is the very air 
In which, if sound at root, the head 

Shall wave most wonderful and fair ; 
With sympathies of joy and sorrow 

Fed, as with morn and even dews. 
Ideal colouring it may borrow 

Richer than ever earthly hues. 

But oft the plant, whose leaves nnsere 
Refresh the desert, hardly l)rooks 

The common-peopled atmosphere 

Of daily thoughts, and words, and looks ; 



It trembles at the brushing wings 
Of many a careless fashion-fly, 

And strange suspicions aim their stings 
To taint it as they wanton by. 

Rare is the heart to bear a flower. 

That must not wholly fall and fade. 
Where alien feelings, hour by l^|ur, j 

Spring up, beset, and overshade ; 
Better, a child of. care and toil. 

To glorify some needy spot. 
Than in a glad redundant soil 

To pine neglected and forgot. 

Yet when, at last, by human slight, 

Or close of their permitted day. 
From the sweet world of life and light 

Such fine creations lapse away, — 
Bury the relics that retain 

Sick odours of departed pride, — 
Hoard as ye will your memory's gain. 

But let them perish where they died. 



THE MEN OF OLD. 

I Kvow not that the men of old 

Were better than men now. 
Of heart more kind, of hand more bold, 

Of more ingenuous brow : 
I heed not those who pine for force 

A ghost of time to raise, 
As if they thus could check the course 

Of these appointed days. 

Still it is true, and over true. 

That I delight to close 
This book of life self-wise and new, 

And let my thoughts repose 
On all that humble happiness. 

The world has since foregone, — 
The daylight of contentedness 

That on those faces shone ! . 

With rights, though not too closely scann d, 

Enjoyed, as far as known, — 
With will by no reverse unmann'd, — 

With pulse of even tone, — 
They from to-day and from to-night 

Expected nothing more. 
Then yesterday and yesternight 

Had proffer'd them before. 

To them was life a simple art 

Of duties to be done, 
A game where each man took his part, 

A race where all must run; 
A battle whose great scheme and scope 

They little cared to know. 
Content, as men at arms, to cope 

Each with his fronting foe. 

Man now his virtue's diadora 

Puts on and proudly wears. 
Great thoughts, great feelings, came to them, 

Like instincts, unawares : 



RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 



485 



Blending their souls' sublimest needs 

With tasks of every day, 
They went about their gravest deeds, 

As noble boys at play. 

And what if nature's fearful wound 

They did not probe and bare, 
For that their spirits never swoon'd 

To watch the misery there, — 
For that their love but flow'd more fast, 

Their charities more free. 
Not conscious what mere drops they cast 

Into the evil sea. 

A man's best things are nearest him, 

Lie close about his feet. 
It is the distant and the dim 

That we are sick to greet : 
For flowers that grow our hands beneath 

We struggle and aspire, 
Our hearts must die, except they breathe 

The air of fresh desire. 

But, brothers, who up reason's hill 

Advance with hopeful cheer. 
Oh ! loiter not, those heights are chill, 

As chill as they are clear; 
And still restrain your haughty gaze, 

The loftier that ye go. 
Remembering distance leaves a haze 

On all that lies below. 



ON LADY C- 



IN DECLINING 



HEALTH. 

Gejjtlt supported by the ready aid 

Of loving hands, whose little work of toil 
Her grateful prodigality repaid 

With all the benediction of her smile, 
She turned her failing feet 
To the soft-pillow'd seat. 
Dispensing kindly greetings all the while. 

Before the tranquil beauty of her face 

I bow'd in spirit, thinking that she were 
A suffering angel, whom t e special grace 
Of God intrusted to our pious care, 
That we might learn from her 
The art to minister 
To heavenly beings in seraphic air. 

There secm'd to lie a weight upon her brain. 

That ever prest her blue-vein'd eyelids down. 
But could not dim her lustrous eyes with pain. 
Nor seam her forehead with the faintest frown : 
She was as she were proud, 
So young, to be allow'd 
To follow Him who wore the thorny crown. 

Nor was she sad, but over every mood. 

To which her lightly-pliant mind gave birth. 
Gracefully ciianging, did a spirit brood. 
Of quiet gayety and serenest mirth ; 
And thus her voice did flow. 
So beautifully low, 
A stream whose music was no thing of earth. 



Woman divine ! ideal best-beloved. 

Here was tJiy image realized to me ; 
In sensible existence lived and moved 
The vision of my sacred [ihantasy ; 
Madonna ! Mary mine ! 
Her look, her smile, was thine, — 
And gazing on that form, I worshipt thee. 



THE LONG-AGO. 

Etes which can but ill define 

Shapes that rise about and near, 
Through the far horizon's line 

Stretch a vision free and clear : 
Memories feeble to retrace 

Yesterday's immediate flow, 
Find a dear familiar face 

In each hour of long-ago. 

Follow yon majestic train 

Down the slopes of old renown, 
Knightly forms without disdain. 

Sainted heads without a frown; 
Emperors of thought and hand 

Congregate, a glorious show. 
Met from every age and land 

In the plains of long-ago. 

As the heart of childhood brings 

Something of eternal joy. 
From its own unsounded springs, 

Such as life can scarce destroy ; 
So, remindful of the prime 

Spirits, wandering to and fro, 
Rest upon the resting tinie 

In the peace of long-ago. 

Youthful hope's religious fire. 

When it burns no longer, leaves 
Ashes of impure desire 

On the altars it deceives; 
But the light that fills the past 

Sheds a still diviner glow, 
Ever farther it is cast 

O'er the scenes of long-ago. 

Many a growth of pain and care, 

Cumbering all the present hour. 
Yields, when once transplanted there, 

Healthy fruit or pleasant flower ; 
Thoughts that hardly flourish here, 

Feelings long have ceased to blow, 
Breathe a native atmosphere 

In the world of long-ago. 

On that deep-retiring shore 

Frequent pearls of beauty lie. 
Where the passion-waves of yore 

Fiercely beat and mounted high : 
Sorrows that are sorrows still 

Lose the bitter taste of woe ; 
Nothing's altogether ill 

In the griefs of long-ago. 
282 



486 



RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 



Tombs where lonely love repines, 

Ghastly tenements of tears, 
Wear the look of happy shrines 

Through the golden mist of years : 
Death, to those who trust in good, 

Vindicates his hardest blow ; 
Oh!" we would not, if we could, 

Wake the sleep of long-ago ! 

Though the doom of swift decay 

Shocks the soul where life is strong, 
Though for frailer hearts the day 

Lingers sad and overlong, — 
Still the weight will find a leaven. 

Still the spoiler's hand is slow, 
While the future has its heaven, 

And the past its long-ago. 



PRINCE EMILIUS OF HESSEN-DARM- 
STADT. 

Froim Hessen-Darmstadt every step 

To Moskwa's blazing banks, 
Was Prince Emilius found in fight. 

Before the foremost ranks ; 
And when upon the icy waste. 

That host was backward cast. 
On Beresina's bloody bridge. 

His banner waved the last. 

His valour shed victorious grace 

On all that dread retreat. 
That path across the wildering snow. 

Athwart the blinding sleet ; 
And every follower of his sword 

Could all endure and dare, 
Becoming warriors strong in hope, 

Or stronger in despair. 

Now, day and dark, along the storm 

The demon Cossacks sweep ; 
The hungriest must not look for food. 

The weariest must not sleep ; 
No rest, but death, for horse or man, 

Whichever first shall tire; — 
They see the flames destroy, but ne'er 

May feel the saving fire. 

Thus never closed the bitter night. 

Nor rose the savage morn, 
But from that gallant company 

Some noble part was shorn, 
And, sick at heart, the prince resolved. 

To keep his purposed way, 
With steadfast, forward looks, nor count 

The losses of the day. 

At length beside a black-burnt hut, 

An island of the snow, — 
Each head in frigid stupor bent 

Toward the saddle bow, — 
They paused, and of that sturdy troop. 

That thousand banded men. 



At one unmeditated glance. 
He number'd only ten ! 

Of all that high triumphant life 

That left his German home. 
Of all those hearts that beat beloved, 

Or lookt for love to come, 
This piteous remnant hardly saved 

His spirit overcame. 
While memory raised each friendly face, 

And called each ancient name. 

Then were his words serene and firm — 

" Dear brothers, it is best 
That here, with perfect trust in Heaven, 

We give our bodies rest ; 
If we have borne, like faithful men, 

Our part of toil and pain. 
Where'er we wake, for Christ's good sake. 

We shall not sleep in vain." 

Some utter'd, others lookt assent. 

They had no heart to speak; 
Dumb hands were prest, the pallid lip, 

Approacht the callous cheek ; 
They laid them side by side ; and death 

To him at least did seem 
To come attired in mazy robe 

Of variegated dream. 

Once more he floated on the breast 

Of old familiar Rhine, 
His mother's and one other smile 

Above him seemed to shine ; 
A blessed dew of healing fell 

On every aching limb. 
Till the stream broaden'd and the air 

Thicken'd and all was dim. 

Nature has bent to other laws. 

If that tremendous night 
Past o'er his frame exposed and worn. 

And left no deadly blight; 
Then wonder not that when refresh! 

And warm he woke at last. 
There lay a boundless gulf of thought 

Between him and the past. 

Soon raising his astonisht head 

He found himself alone, 
Shelter'd beneath a genial heap 

Of vestments not his own ; 
The light increast the solemn truth 

Revealing more and more, — 
His soldiers corses self-despoiled. 

Closed up the narrow door. 

That very hour, fulfilling good. 

Miraculous succour came. 
And Prince Emilius lived to give 

This worthy deed to fame. 
Oh, brave fidelity in death ! 

Oh, strength of loving will ! 
These are the holy balsam drops 

That woful wars distil. 



p. J. BAILEY. 



Festus is the title of a very remarkable 
poem published anonymously by Pickering, in 
1839. It is stated inlloRNE's New Spirit of tlie 
Age, that it was written by P. J. Bailev, but of 
Mr. Bailey, more than that he wrote Festus, I 
know nothing-. The poem attracted consi- 
derable attention, on its appearance, but was 
not generally praised. The versification is 
often careless, and the work shows a want of 
the constructive faculty. Moreover, it is too 
daring in action and conclusion. It has scenes 
in the unknown world, and its hero speaks 



face to face with Him whom no one hath seen 
or at any time shall see. In some respects it 
is not unlike the Faust of Goethe. It is 
not equal to that wonderful book ; yet it 
has passages of deepest wisdom, of power 
and tenderness, such as few poets in our day 
have produced ; and it will live. 

In the Monthly Magazine for 1840 is an 
additional scene to Festus, in which the 
author speaks of himself and his poem. The 
first of the following extracts is from this 
scene. 



FESTUS DESCRIBES HIS FRIEND. 

Hk had no times of study, and no place; 
Ail places and all times to him were one. 
Hid soul was like the wind-harp, which he loved, 
And sounded only when the spirit blew, 
Sometime in feasts and foUies, lor he went [rose 
Life-like through all things ; and his thoughts then 
Like sparkles in the bright wine, brighter still. 
Sometimes in dreams, and then the shining words 
Would wake him in the dark before his face. 
All tilings talk'd tlioughts to him. The sea went mad 
To show his meaning; and the awful sun 
Thundered his thoughts into him ; and at night 
The stars v?ould whisper theirs, the moon sigh hers, 
He spake the world's one tongue; in earth and 

heaven 
There is but one, it is the word of truth. 
To him the eye let out its hidden meaning; 
And young and old made their hearts over to him; 
And thoughts were told to him as unto none, 
Save one who heareth, said and unsaid, all. . . . 
All things were inspiration unto him — 
Wood, wold, hill, field, sea, city, solitude, 
And crowds, and streets, and man where'er he was. 
And the blue eye of God which is above us ; 
Brook-bounded pine spinnies, where spirits flit; 
And haunted pits the rustic hurries by, 
Where coM wet ghosts sit ringing jingling bells ; 
Old orchards' leaf-roofsd aisles, and rcd-cheek'd load; 
And the blood-colour'd tears which yew-trees weep 
O'er churchyard graves, like murderers remorseful ; 
The dark green rings where fairies sit and sup, 
Crushing the violet dew in the acorn cup ; 
Where by his new-made briele the bridegroom sips. 
The white moon shimmering on their longing lips ; 
The large, o'er-loadcd, wealthy-looking wains 
Quietly swaggering home through leafy lanes, 
Leaving on all low branches, as they come. 
Straws for the birds, ears of the harvest-home; — 
He drew his light from that he was amidst, 



As doth a lamp from air which hath itself 
Matter of light although it show not. His 
Was but the power to light what might be lit. 
He met a muse in every lonely maid ; 
And learn'd a song from every lip he loved. 
But his heart ripen'd most 'neath southern eyes. 
Which sunn'd their sweets into him all day long, 
For fortune cail'd him southward, towards the sun. 
We do not make our thoughts ; they grow in us 
Like grain in wood ; the growth is of the skies, 
Which are of nature, nature is of God, 
The world is full of glorious likenesses, 
The poet's power is to sort these out. 
And to make music from the common strings 
With which the world is strung; to make the dumb 
Earth utter heavenly harmony, and draw 
Life clear and sweet and harmless as spring water. 
Welling its way through flowers. Without faith, 
Illimitable faith, strong as a state's 
III its own might, in God, no bard can be. 
All tilings are signs of other and of nature. 
It is at night we see heaven movetb, and 
A darkness thick with suns ; the thoughts we think 
Subsist the same in God, as stars in heaven. 
And as those specks of light will prove great worlds. 
When we approach them sometime free from flesh. 
So too our thoughts will become magnified 
To mindlike things immortal. And as space 
Is but a properly of God, wherein 
Is laid all matter, other attributes 
May be the infinite homes of mind and soul. . . . 
Love, mirth, wo, pleasure, was in turn his theme, 
And the great good which beauty does the soul, 
And the God-made necessity of things. 
And, like that noble knight in olden tale, 
Who changed bis armour's hue at each fresh charge 
By virtue of his lady-love's strange ring. 
So that none knew him save bis private page, 
And she who cried, God save him, every time 
He brake spears with tiie brave till he quell'd all — 
So he applied him to all themes that came ; 

4S7 



488 



P. J. BAILEY. 



Loving the most to breast the rapid deep, 
Where others had been drown'd, and heeding 

naught 
Where danger might not fill the place of fame. 
And mid the magic circle of those sounds, 
His lyre ray'd out, spcll-bound himself he stood, 
Like a still'd storm. It is no task for suns 
To shine. He knew himself a bard ordain'd, 
More than inspired, of God inspirited. 
Making himself like an electric rod 
A lure for lightning feelings ; and his words 
Felt like the things which fall in thunder, which 
The mind, when in a dark, hot, cloudful state, 
Dolh make metallic, meteoric, ball-like. 
He spake to spirits with a spirit-tongue. 
Who came compcll'd by wizard word of trutli. 
And ray'd them round him from the ends of heaven ; 
For, as be all bards, he was born of beauty. 
And with a natural fitness, to draw down 
All tones and shades of beauty to his soul. 
Even as the rainbow tinted shell, which lies 
Miles deep at bottom of the sea, hath all 
Colours of skies, and flowers, and gems, and plumes. 
And all by nature, which doth reproduce 
Like loveliness in seeming opposites. 
Our life is like the wizard's charmed rin?. 
Death's heads, and loathsome things fill up the 

ground ; 
But spirits wing about, and wait on us. 
While yet the hour of enchantment is, 
And while we keep in, we are safe, and can 
Force them to do our bidding. And he raised 
The rebel in himself, and in his mind 
Walk'd with him through the world. 



ANGELA. 

I LovEn her, for that she was beautiful, 
And that to me she seem'd to be all nature 
And all varieties of things in one ; 
Would set at night in clouds of tears, and rise 
All light and laughter in the morning; fear 
No petty customs nor appearances ; 
But think what others only dream'il about; 
And say what others did but think ; and do 
What others would but say ; and glory in [me ; 
What others dared but do ; it was these which won 
And that she never school'd within her breast 
One thought or feeling, but gave holiday 
To all ; and that she told me all her woes 
And wrongs and ills ; and so she made them mine 
In the communion of love ; and we 
Grew like each other, for we loved each other; 
She, mild and generous as the sun in spring ; 
And I, like earth, all budding out with love. 
The beautiful are never desolate ; 
For some one alvvay loves them — God or man. 
If man abandons, God Himself takes them. 
And thus it was. She whom I once loved died. 
The lightning loathes its cloud ; the soul its clay. 
Can I forget that hand I took in mine, 
Pale as pale violets ; that eye, where mind 
And matter met alike divine 1 Ah, no ! 



May God that moment judge me when I do ! 
Oh ! she was fair; her nature once all spring 
And deadly beauty like a maiden sword ; 
Startlingly beautiful. I see her now ! 
Whatc'er tltou art, thy soul is in my mind; 
Thy shadow hourly lengthens o'er my brain 
And peoples all its pictures with thyself, 
Gone, not forgotten ; pass'd, not lost; thou'lt shine 
In heaven like a bright spot in the sun ! 
She said she wish'd to die, and so she died ; 
For, cloudlike, she pour'd out her love, which was 
Her life, to freshen this parch'd heart. It was 

thus ; 
I said we were to part, but she said nothing; 
There was no discord ; it was music ceased ; 
Life's thrilling, bursting, bounding joy. She sate 
Like a house-god, her hands fix'd on her knee ; 
And her dank hair lay loose and long behind her, 
Through which her wild bright eye fiash'd like a 

flint ; 
She spake not, moved not, but she look'd the more ; 
As if her eye were action, speech, and feeling. 
I felt it all, and came and knelt beside her, 
The electric touch solved both our souls together; 
Then comes the feeling which unmakes, undoes; 
Which tears the sealike soul up by the roots 
And lashes it in scorn against the skies. 
Twice did I stamp to God, swearing, hand clench'd, 
That not even He nor death should tear her from me. 
It is the saddest and the sorest night 
One's own love- weeping. But why call on God 1 
But that the feeling of the boundless bounds 
Ail feeling! as the welkin doth the world. 
It is this which ones us with the whole and God. 
Then first we wept; then closed and clung 

together ; 
And my heart shook this building of my breast 
Like a live engine booming up and down. 
She fell upon me like a snow-wreath thawing. 
Never were bliss and beauty, love and wo, 
Kavell'd and twined together into madness, 
As in that one wild hour, to which all else, 
The past, is but a picture. That alone 
Is real, and for ever there in front, 

After that I left her 

And only saw her once again alive. 



CALMNESS OF THE SUBLIME. 

The goodness of the heart is shown in deeds 
Of peacefulness and kindness. Hand and heart 
Are one thing with the good, as thou shouldst be. 
Do my words trouble thee 1 then treasure them. 
Pain overgot gives peace, as death doth Heaven. 
All things that speak of Heaven speak of peace. 
Peace hath more might than war; high brows are 

calm ; 
Great thoughts are still as stars ; and truths, like 

suns. 
Stir not, but many systems tend around them. 
Mind's step is still .as Death's ; and all great things 
Which cannot be controU'd, whose end is good. 



p. J. BAILEY. 



489 



FAITH. 

Faith is a higher faculty than reason, 
Though of the brightest power of revelation, 
As the snow-peaked innuntaiu rises o'er 
The lightning, and ap[)lies itself to heaven, 
We know in daytime there arc stars about us 
Just as at night, and name them what and where 
By sight of science ; so by faith we know. 
Although we may not see them till our night, 
That spirits are about us, and believe. 
That to a spirit's eye all heaven may be 
As full of angels as a beam of light 
Of motes. As spiritual, it shows all 
Classes of life, perhaps above our kind. 
Known to tradition, reason, or God's word. 
As earthly, it imbodies most the life 
Of youth ; its powers, its aims, its deeds, its failings ; 
And as a sketch of world-life, it begins 
And ends, and rightly, in heaven, and with God ; 
While heaven is also in the midst tliereof. 
God, or all good, the evil of the world. 
And man, wherein are both, are each display'd ; 
The mortal is the model of all men. 
Tiie foibles, follies, trials, sulferings 
Of a young, hot, un-world-schooTd heart, that has 
Had its own way in life, and wherein all 
May see some likeness of their own, 'tis these 
Attract, unite, and, sunlike, concentrate 
The ever-moving system of our feeling ; 
Like life, too, as a whole, it has a moral. 
And, as in life, each scene too has its moral, 
A scene for every year of his young life, 
Shining upon it, like the quiet moon. 
Illustrating the obscure, unequal earth : 
And though these scenes may seem to careless eyes 
Irregular and rough and unconnected. 
Like to the stones at Stonehenge, still a use, 
A meaning, and a purpose may be mark'd 
Among them of a temple rear'd to God, — 
It has a plan, no plot ; and life has none. 



GREAT THOUGHTS. 

Who can mistake great thoughts? 
They seize upon the mind ; arrest, and search, 
And shake it; bow the tall soul as by wind; 
Kush over it like rivers over reeds. 
Which (piaver in the current; turn us cold. 
And pale, and voiceless ; leaving in the brain 
A rocking and a ringing, — glorious. 
But momentary ; madness might it last. 
And close the soul with Heaven as with a seal. 



A LETTER. 

Whex he hath had 
A letter from his lady dear, he bless'd 
The paper that her hand had travcU'd over, 
And her eye look'd on, and woiild think he saw 
Gleams of that light she lavish'd from her eyes. 
Wandering amid the words of love she'd traced 
Like glowwormsamongbedsof flowers. Heseem'd 
To bear with being but because she loved him ; 
She was the sheath wherein his soul had rest, 
As hath a sword from war. 
fi2 



TRUTH AND SORROW. 

Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths ; 
Though many, yet they help not; bright, they 

light not. 
They arc too late to serve us ; and sad things 
Are aye too true. We never see the stars 
Till we can .see naught but them. So with truth. 
And yet if one would look down a deep well, 
Even at noon, we might see the.sc same stars, 
Far fairer than the blinding blue: the truth 
Stars in the water like a dark bright eye. 
But there are other t-ycs men better love 
Than truth's, for when we have her she is so cold 
And proud, we know not what to do with her. . . 
Sometimes the thought comes swiftening over us, 
Like a small bird winging the still blue air. 
And then again at other times it rises 
Slow, like a cloud which scales the skies all breath- 
less. 
And just o'erhead lets itself down on us. 
Sometimes we feel the wish across the mind 
Rush, like a rock<!t roaring up the sky. 
That we should join with God and give the world 
The go-by ; butthe world meantime turns round, 
And peeps us in the face; the wanton world; 
We feel it gently pressing down our arm. 
The arm we raised to do for truth such wonders; 
We feci it softly bearing on our side; 
We feel it touch and thrill us through the 'oody ; 
And we arc fools, and there 's an end of us. 



THE EMD OF LIFE. 

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not 

breaths ; 
In feeling-^, not in figures on a dial. 
We sh.iuld count lime by heart-throbs. He most 

lives. 
Who thinks most ; feels the noblest ; acts the best. 
And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest: 
Lives in one hour more than in years do some 
Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins. 
Life is but a means unto an end ; that end. 
Beginning, moan, aifd end to all things — God. 
The dead have all the glory of the world. 



THE POET. 

TiiK bard must have a kind, courageous heart, 
And natural chivalry to aid the weak. 
He must believe the best of every thing; 
Love all below, and worship all above. 
All animals arc living hieroglyphs. 
The dashing dog, and .stealthy-stepping cat, 
Hawk, bull, and all that breathe, mean something 

more 
To the true eye than their shapes show ; for all 
Were made in love, and made to be beloved. 
Thus must he think as to earth's lower life. 
Who seeks to win the world to thought and love, 
As doth the bard, whose habit is all kindness 
To every thing. 



HENRY ALFORD. 



This gentle, meditative poet, whose School 
of the Heart, and other poems, were pub-, 
lished at Cambridge, in 1835, is a follower of 
WouDswQRTH. His School of the Heart is 
an '* Excursion" in a minor key. It is in a 
vein of high religious feeling and attachment 
to the English church, of which Mr. Alfokd 
is a clergyman. It is such poetry as Gold- 



smith's pure-hearted vicar would not have ob- 
jected to. The dedication of these volumes 
is : " To ihe plnymale of his childhood, the joy 
ff his youth, pud the dear companinn of his cares 
and studies, these poems are dedicated by her 
affectionate husband." Mr. Alford has since 
written The Abbot of Machelnaye, published 
by Pickering. 



A CHURCHYARD COLLOQUY. 

Stand by me here, beloved, vi'here thick crowd 
On either side the path the headsti>nes white: 
How wonderful is death — liow passing thought 
That nearer than yon glorious group of hills, 
Aye, but a scanty foot or two beneath >• 

This pleasant sunny mound, corruption teems; — 
And that one sight of that which is so near 
Could turn the current of our joyful thoughts, 
Winch now not e'en disturbs them. 

See this stone, 
Not, like the rest, full of the dazzling noon, 
But sober brown — round v^diich the ivy twines 
Its searching tendril, and the yew-tree shade 
Just covers the short grave. He mourn'd not ill 
Wb.o graved the simple plate without a name: 
" This grave's a cradle, vviiere an infant lyes, 
Rofkt faste asleepe with death's sad lullabyes." 
And yet methinks he did not care to wrong 
The genius of the place, when he wrote "sad :" 
The chime of hourly clock, — the mountain stream 
That sends up ever to thy resting-place 
Its gush of many voices — and the crow 
Of matin cock, faint it may be but shrill, 
From ehn-eaihosom'd farms among the dells, — 
These, liltle s'umherer, are thy lullabyes: 
Who would not sleep a sweet and peaceful sleep, 
Thus husht and sung to with all pleasant sounds ? 

And I can stand beside thy cradle, child, 
And see yon belt of clouds in silent pomp 
Midway the mountain sailing slowly on, 
Whose beaconed top peers over on the vale ; — 
And upward narrowing in thick-timbered dells 
Dark solemn coombs, with wooded buttresses 
Propping hismiahty weigb.t — each with its stream, 
Now leaping sportfully from crag to crag, 
Now smooth'd in clear black pools; then in the vales, 
'J'hrough lanes of bowering foliage glittering on, 
By cots and firms and quiet villages 
.^ndmeadowsbrightest green. Who would not sleep, 
Rock'd in so fair a cradle 1 

But that word, 
That one word — "death," comes over my sick brain 
Wrappincr my vision in a sudden swoon : 
Blotting the gorgeous pomp of sun and shade, 
Mountain and wooded cliff, and sparkling stream, 
490 



In a thick dazzling darkness. — Who art thou 
Under tliis hillock on the mountain side 1 
I love the like of thee with a deep love, 
And therefore call'il thee dear — thee who art now 
A handful of dull earth. No lullabyes 
Hearest thou now, be they or sweet or sad — 
Not revelry of streams, nor ponip of clouds; 
Not the blue top of mountain — nor the woods 
That clothe the steeps, have any joy for thee. 

Go to, then — tell me not of balmiest rest 
In fairest cradle — for I never felt 
One half so keenly as I feel it now, 
That not the promise of the sweetest sleep 
Can make nie smile on death. Our days and years 
Pass onward — and the mighty of old time 
Have put their glory by, and laid them down 
Undrest of all Ihe attributes they wore, 
In the dark sepulchre — strange preference 
To fly froin beds of down and softest strains 
Of timbrel and of pipe, to the cold earth, 
The silent chamber of unknown decay : 
To yield the delicate flesh, so loved of late 
By the informing spirit, to the maw 
Of unrelenting waste ; to go abroad 
From the sweet prison of this moulded clay. 
Into the pathless air, among the vast 
And unnamed multitude of trembling stars; 
Strange journey, to attempt the void unknown 
From whence no news returns ; and cast the freight 
Of nicely treasured life at once away. 

Come, let us talk of death — and sweetly play 
With his black locks, and listen for a wdiile 
To the lone music of the passing wind 
In the rank grass that waves above his bed. 

Is it not wonderful, the darkest day 
Of all the days of life — the hardest wrench 
That tries the coward sense, should mix itself 
In all our gentlest and most joyous moods, 
A not unwelcome visitant — that thought. 
In her quaint wanderings, may not reach a spot 
Of lavish beauty, but the spectre form 
Meets herewith greeting, and she gives herself 
To his mysterious converse? I have roam'd 
Through many mazes of unregistered 
And undetermined fancy; and I know 
That when the air grows balmy to my fee! 
And rarer light falls on me, and sweet sounds 



HENRY ALFORD. 



491 



Dance tremulously round my captive ears, 

I soon shall stumble on some mounded grave ; 

And ever of the thoughts that stay with me, 

(There are that flit away) the plcasantest 

Is hand in hand with death : and my bright hopes, 

Like the strange colours of divided light. 

Fade into pale uncertain violet 

About some hallow'd precinct. Can it be 

That there are blessed memories join'd with death, 

Of those who parted peacefully, and words 

That cling about our hearts, ijtter'd between 

The day and darkness, in Life's twilight time 1 



ACADEME. 

Bkfore the day the gleaming dawn doth flee: — 

All yesternight I had a dreary dream ; 

Methought I walk'd in desert Academe 

Among fallen pillars — and there came to me, 

All in a dim half-twilight silently, 

A very sad old man — his eyes were red 

With over-weeping — and he cried and said 

" The light hath risen but shineth not on me." 

Beautiful Athens, all thy loveliness 

Is like the scarce remember'd burst of spring 

When now the sum.mer in her party dress 

Hath clothed the woods, and fiil'd each living thing 

With ripest joy — because upon our time 

Hath risen the noon, and thou wert in thy prime. 



A MEMORY. 

TriE sweetest flower that ever saw the light, 
The smoothest stream that ever wander'd by. 
The fairest star upon the brow of night, 
Joying and sparkling from his sphere on high, 
The softest glances of the stockdove's eye, 
The lily pure, themarybud gold-bright, 
The gush of song that floodeth all the sky 
P'rom the dear flatterer mounted out of sight, — 
Are not so pleasure-stirring to the thought. 
Not to the wounded soul so full of balm. 
As one frail glimpse, by painful straining caught 
Along the past's <leep mist-enfolded calm, 
(^f that sweet face, not visibly defined, 
But rising clearly o.n the inner mind. 



A FUNERAL. 

Si.owLT and .softly let the music go, 

As ye wind upwards to the gray church tower; 

Check the shrill hautboy , let the pipe breathe low — 

Tread lightly on the pathside daisy flower. 

For she ye carry was a gentle bud, 

Loved by the unsunn'd drops of silver dew; 

Her voice was like the whisper of the wood 

In prime of even, when the .stars are few. 

Lay her all gently in the flowerful mould, 

Weep with her one brief hour; then turn away, — 

Go to hope's prison, — and from out the cold 

And solitary gratincrs many a day 

liOok forth: 'tis said the world is growing old, — 

And streaks of orient light in Time's horizon play. 



" THE MASTER IS COME, AND CALL- 
ETII FOR THEE." 

Rise, said the Master, come unto the feast : — 

She heard the call, and rose with willing feet: 

But thinking it not otherwise than meet 

For such a bidding to put on her best, 

She is gone from us for a few short hours 

Into her bridal closet, there to wait 

For the unfolding of the jjalace gate 

That gives her entrance to the blissful bowers. 

We have not seen her yet ; though we have been 

Full often to her chambi^r door, and oft 

Have listen'd underneath the postern green, 

And laid fresh flowers, and whisper'd short and soft : 

But she hath made no answer, and the day 

From the clear west is fading fast away. 



BEAUTY OF NATURE. 

Oft have I listen'd to a voice that spake 
Of cold and dull realities of life. 
Deem we not thus of life : for we may fetch 
Light from a hidden glory, which shall clothe 
The meanest thing that is with hues of heaven. 
If thence we draw not glory, all our light 
Is but a taper in a chamberVl cave. 
That giveth presence to new gulfs of dark. 
Our light should be the broad and open day; 
And as wc lose its shining, we shall look 
Still on the bright and daylight face of things. 

Is it for nothing that the mighty sun * 

Rises each morning from the Eastern plain 
Over the meadows fresh with hoary dew 1 
Is it for nothing that the shadowy trees 
On yonder hill-top, in the summer night 
Stand darkly out before the golden moon 1 
Is it for nothing that the autumn boughs 
Hang thick with mellow fruit, what time the 

swain 
Presses the luscious juice, and joyful shouts 
Rise in the purple twilight, gladdening him 
Who labour'd late, and homeward wends his way 
Over the ridgy grounds, and through the mead, 
Where the mist broods along the fringed stream? 
Far in the Western sea dim islands float. 
And lines of mountain coast receive the sun 
As he sinks downward to his resting-place, 
Minister'd to by bright and crimson clouds — 
Is it for nothing that some artist hand 
Hath wrought together things so beautiful? 
Noon f(dlows morn, the quiet breczelcss noon : 
.\nd i)Icasant even, season of sweet sounds 
And peaceful sights — and then the wondrous 

bird 
That warbles like an angel, full of love, 
From copse and hedgerow side pouring abroad 
Her tide of song into the listening night. 
Beautiful is the last gleam (.f the sun 
Slanted through twining branches: beautiful 
The birth of the faint stars — first clear and pale 
The steady-lustred Hesper, like a gem 



492 



HENRY ALFORD. 



On the flush'd bosom of the West ; and then 
Some princely fountain of unborrow'd light, 
Arctufus, or the Dogstar, or ♦he seven 
That circle without setting round the pole. 
Is it for nothing at the midnighf hour, 
That solemn silence sways the hemisphere. 
And ye must listen long before ye hear 
The cry of beasts, or fall of distant stream, 
Or breeze among the tree-tops — while the stars 
Like guardian spirits watch the slumbering earth ] 



A SPIRITUAL AND WELL-ORDERED 
MIND 

As on the front 
Of some cathedral pile, ranged orderly. 
Rich tabernacles throng of sainted men, 
Each in his highday robes magnificent. 
Some tipp'd with crowns, the church's nursingsires, 
And some, the hallow'd temple's serving-men, 
With crosiers deep emboss'd, and comely staves 
Resting aslant upon their reverend form. 
Guarding the entrance well; while round theAvalls, 
And in the corbels of the massy nave, 
All circumstances of living child and man 
And heavenly influence, in parables 
Of daily passing forms is pictured forth : 
So all the beautiful and seemly things 
That crowd the «arth, within the humble soul 
Have place and order due ; because there dwells 
In the inner temple of the holy heart 
The presence of the spirit form above : 
There are his tabernacles; there his rites 
Want not their due performance, nor sweet strains 
Of heavenly music, nor a daily throng 
Of worshippers, both those who minister 
In service fix'd — the mighty principles 
And leading governors of thought ; and those 
Who come and go, the troop of fleeting joys — 
All hopes, all sorrows, all that enter in 
Through every broad receptacle of sense. 



HYMN FOR ALL-SAINTS DAY IN THE 
MORNING. 

Staxd up before your God 

You army bold and bright. 
Saints, martyrs, ajid confessors, 

In your robes of white ; 
The church below doth challenge you 

To an act of praise ; 
Ready with mirth in all the earth 

Her matin song to raise. 

Stand up before your God 

In beautiful array, 
Make ready all your instruments 

The while we mourn and pray ; 
For we must staj' to mourn ;;iid pray 

Some prelude to our song ; 
The fear of death has closrg'd our breath 

And our foes are swift and strong. 



But ye before your God 

Are hushed from all alarm. 
Out through the grave and gate of death 

Ye have past into the calm ; 
Your fight is done, your victory won, 

Through peril, and toil, and blood ; 
Among the slain on the battle plain 

We buried ye where ye stood. 

Stand up before your God, 

Although we cannot hear 
The new song ke hath taught you 

With our fleshly ear ; 
Our bosoms burn that hymn to learn, 

And from the church below 
E'en while we sing, on heavenward wing 

Some happy souls shall go. 

Ye stand before your God, 

But we press onward still. 
The soldiers of his army, 

The servants of his will : 
A captive band in foreign land 

Long ages we have been ; 
But our dearest theme and our fondest dream 

Is the home we have not seen. 

We soon shall meet our God, 

The hour is wafting on, 
The day-spring from on high hath risen, 

And the night is spent and gone ; 
The light of earth it had its birth 

And it shall have its doom ; 
The sons of earth they are few in birth, 

But many in the tomb. 



A DOUBT. 

I KNOW not how the right may be : — 
But I give thanks whene'er I see 
Down in the green slopes of the West 
Old Glastonbury's tower'd crest. 
I know not how the right may be : — 
But I have oft had joy to see, 
By play of chance, my road beside. 
The cross on which the Saviour died. 
I know not how the right may be : — 
But I loved once a tall elm tree. 
Because between its boughs on high 
That cross was open'd in the sky. 
I know not how the right ma%' be : — 
But I have shed strange tears to see, 
Passing an unknown town at night. 
In some warm chambers full of light, 
A mother and two children fiiir 
Kneeling with lifted hands at prayer. 
I know not how it is — my boast 
Of Reason seems to dwindle down ; 
And my mind seems down-argued most 
By freed conclusioxjs not her own. 

I know not how it is — unless 
Weakness and strength are near allied ; 
And joys which most the spirit bless 
Are farthest oft' from earthly pride. 



ELIZA COOK. 



Eliza Cook has been a frequent contributor 
to the English literary periodicals for several 
years, and her productions have been very 
generally reprinted in the 'gazettes of this 
country, so that her name is nearly as familiar 
to American readers as those of Mrs. Iie:\ians 
and Mrs. Norton. Her poems are of that 
class which is most sure to w^in the popular 
favour. They have a social character, and 
portray with simplicity and truth, the kindly 



affections. They are free, spirited, animated 
by a generous, joyous feeling, yet feminine, 
quiet, tranquillizing. 

Miss Cook is now about twenty-five years 
of age. She resides in London. The largest 
collection of her writings, " Melaia, and other 
Poems," was published by Tilt, in 1840, and 
has been reprinted in the present year, by 
Langley, of New York, in a very elegant 
edition. 



THE MOURNERS. 

KixR Death sped forth in his dreaded power 

To make the most of his tyrant hour ; 

And the first he took was a white-robed pfirl, 

With tlie orange bloom twined in each glossy curl, 

Her fond betrothed hung over the bier, 

Bathing her sliroud with the gushing tear : 

He madly raved, he shrick'd his pain, 

With frantic speecfi and burning brain. [gone. 

" There 's no joy," cried he, " now my dearest is 

Take, take mc, Death ; for I cannot live on !" 

The sire was robb'd of his eldest born, 
And he bitterly bled while the branch was torn : 
Other scions were round, as good and fair, 
But none seem'd so biight as the breathless heir. 
" My hopes are crush'd," was the father's cry ; 
" Since my darling is lost. I, too, would die." 
The valued friend was snatch'd away. 
Bound to another from childhood's day^ ; 
And the one that was left exclaini'd in despair, 
" Oh ! ha sleeps in the tomb — let me follow him 
there !" 

A mother was taken, whose constant love 
Had nestled her child like a fair young dove ; 
And the heart of that child to tile mother had grown, 
Like the ivy to oak, or the moss to the stone : 
Nor loud nor wild was the burst of wo, 
But the tide of anguish ran strong below ; 
And the reft one turn'd from all that was light, 
From the flowers of day and the stars of night ; 
Breathing where none might hear or see — 
" Where thou art, my mother, thy child would be." 

Death smiled as he heard each earnest word : 

" Nay, nay," said be, "he tiiis work deferr'd ; 

I'll see thee again in a fleeting year. 

And, if grief and devotion live on sincere, 

I promise then thou shall share the rest 

Of the being now pluck'd from thy doating breast ; 

Then, if thou cravest the coflin and pall 

As thou dost this moment, my spear shall fall." 

And Death fled till Time on ins rapid wmg 

Gave the hour that brought back the skeleton king. 



But the lover was ardently wooing again, 
Kneeling in serfdom, and proud of his chain ; 
He had found an idol to adore, 
Rarer than that he had worshipp'd before : 
His step was gay, his laugh was loud. 
As he led the way for the bridal crowd ; 
And his eyes still kept their joyous ray, [lay. 

Though be went by the grave where his first love 
"Ha! ha!" shouted Death, " 'tis passing clear 
That I am a guest not w anted here !" 
The father was seen in his children's games, 
Kissing their fkish'd brows and blessing their names! 
And his eye grew bright as he mark'd the charms 
Of the boy at his knee and the girl in his arms : 
His voice rung out in the merry noise, 
He was first in all their hopes and joys ; 
He ruled their sports in the setting sun, 
Nor gave a thought to the missing one. 
"Are ye ready V cried Death, as he raised his dart. 
" Nay ! nay I" shriek'd the father ; " in mercy 
depart !" 

The friend again was quiiffing the bowl. 

Warmly pledging bis faith and soul ; 

His bosom cherish'd with glowing pride 

A stranger form that sat by his side ; 

His hand the hand of that stranger press'd ; 

He praised his song, be erho'd his jest; 

And the mirth and wit of that new-found mate 

Made a blank of the name so prized of late. 

" See ! see !" cried Death, as he hurried past, 

" How bravely the bonds of friendship last !" 

But the orphan child ! Oh, where was she ] 

With clasping hands and bended knee, 

All alone on the churchyard's sod. 

Mingling the names of mother and God. 

Her dark and sunken eye was hid. 

Fast weeping beneath the swollen lid ; 

Her si'jfh was heavy, jier forehead was chill. 

Betraying the wound was unheal'd still ; 

And her smother'd prayer was yet heard to crave 

A speedy home in the self-same grave. 

Hers was the love all holy and strong ; 
Hers was the sorrow fervent and long ; 

a r 4M 



494 



ELIZA COOK. 



Hers was the spirit whose light was shed 

As an incense tire above the dead. 

Death Hnger'd there, and paused awhile ; 

But she beckon'd him on with a welcoming smile. 

" There 's a solace," cried she, " for all ollicrs to find, 

But a mother leaves no equal behind." 

And the kindest blow Death ever gave 

Laid the mourning child in the parent's grave. 



THE WREATHS. 

Whom do we crown with the laurel leaf? 

The hero god, the soldier chief, 

But we dream of the crushing cannon-wheel, 

Of the flying sliot and the reeking steel. 

Of the crimson plain where warm blood smokes, 

Where clangour deafens and sulphur chokes ; 

Oh, who can love the laurel wreath, 

Pluck'd from the gory field of death ] 

Whom do we crov^'n with summer flowers 1 
The young and fair in their happiest hours. 
But the buds will only live in the light 
Of a festive day or a glittering night ; 
We know the vermil tints will fade — 
That pleasure dies with the bloomy braid : 
And who can prize the coronal 
That 's form'd to dazzle, wither and fall 1 

Who wears the cypress, dark and drear 1 
The one who is shedding the mourner's tear : 
The gloomy branch for ever twines 
Round foreheads graved with sorrow's lines. 
'Tis the type of a sad and lonely heart. 
That hath seen its dearest hopes depart. 
Oh, who can like the chaplet band 
That is wove by melancholy's hand ? 

Where is the ivy circlet found ] 

On the one whose brain and lips are drown'd 

In the purple stream — who drinks and laughs 

Till his cheeks outflush the wine he quaffs. 

Oh, glossy and rich is the ivy crown, 

With its gems of grape-juice trickling down ; 

But, bright as it seems o'er the glass and bowl 

It has stain for the heart and shade for the soul 

But there's a green and fragrant leaf 
Betokens nor revelry, blood, nor grief: 
'Tis the purest amaranth springing below, 
And rests on the calmest, noblest brow : 
It is not the right of the monarch or lord. 
Nor purchased by gold, nor won by the sword ; 
For the lowliest temples gather a ray 
Of quenchless light from the palm of bay. 

Oh, beautiful bay ! I worship thee — 
I homage thy wreath — I cherish thy tree ; 
And of all the chaplets fame may deal, 
'Tis only to this one I would kneel : 
For as Indians fly to the banian branch, 
When tempests lower and thvuiders launch. 
So the spirit may turn from crowds and strife 
And seek from the bay -wreath joy and life. 



HE LED HER TO THE ALTAR. 

He led her to the altar. 

But the bride was not his chosen : 
He led her, with a hand as cold 

As though its pulse had frozen. 
Flowers were crush'd beneath his tread, 

A gilded dome was o'er him ; 
But his hrow was damp, and his lips were pale. 

As the marble steps before him. 

His soul was sadly dreaming 

Of one he had hoped to cherish; 
Of a name and form that the sacred rites, 

Beginning, told must perish. 
He gazed not on the stars and gems 

Of those who circled round him; 
But trembled as his lips gave forth 

The words that falsely bound him. 

Many a voice was praising, 

Many a hand was profifer'd ; 
But mournfully he turn'd him 

From the greeting that was ofFer'd. 
Despair had fix'd upon his brow 

Its deepest, saddest token ; 
And the bloodless cheek, the stifled sigh, 

Betray'd his heart was broken. 



A LOVE SONG. 

Dear Kate, I do not swear and rave, 

Or sigh sweet things as many can ; 
But though my lip ne'er plays the slave, 

My fieart will not disgrace the ma7i. 
I prize thee — ay, my bonnie Kate, 

So firmly fond this breast can be. 
That I would brook the sternest fate 

If it but left me health and thee. 

I do not promise that our life 

Shall know no shade on heart or brow ; 
For human lot and mortal strife 

AVould mock the tidsehood of such vow. 
But when the clouds of pain and care 

Shall teach us we are not divine. 
My deepest sorrows thou shalt share, 

And I will strive to hghten thine. 

We love each other, yet perchance 

The murmurs of dissent may rise ; 
Fierce words may chase the tender glance, 

And anary flashes light our eyes. 
But we must learn to check the frown. 

To reason rather than to blame ; 
The wisest have their faults to own, 

And you and I, girl, have the same. 

You must not like me less, my Kate, 

For such an honest strain as this; 
I love fhee dearly, but I hate 

The puling rhymes of "kiss" and "bliss.' 
There's truth in all I've said or sung; 

I vi'oo thee as a man should woo ; 
And though I lack a honey'd tongue. 

Thou 'It never find a breast" more true. 



ELIZA COOK. 



495 



THE FREE. 

The wild streams leap with heatllong sweep 
In their curbless course o'er the mountain steep ; 
All fresh and strong they foam along, 
Waking the rocks with their cataract song. 
My eye bears a glance like the beam on a lance, 
While I watch the waters dash and dance ; 
I burn with glee, for I love to see 
The path of any thing that 's free. 

The skylark springs with dew on his wings, 

And up in the arch of heaven he sings 

Trill-la — trill-la, oh, sweeter far 

Than the notes that come through a golden bar. 

The joyous bay of a hound at play, 

The caw of a rook on its homeward way — 

Oh ! these shall be the music for me, 

For I love the voices of the free. 

The deer starts by with his antlers high, 
Proudly tossing his head to the sky ; 
The barb runs the plain unbroke by the rein, 
With streaming nostrils and flying mane ; 
The clouds are stirr'd by the eaglet bird. 
As the flap of its swooping pinion is heard. 
Oh ! these shall be the creatures for me. 
For my soul was forni'd to love the free. 

The mariner brave, in his bark on the wave. 
May laugh at the walls round a kingly slave ; 
And the one whose lot is the desert spot 
Has no dread of an envious foe in his cot. 
The thrall and state at the palace gate 
Are what my spirit has learnt to hate: 
Oh ! the hills shall be a home for me. 
For I'd leave a throne for the hut of the free. 



THE OLD ARM-CHAIR. 

I LOVE it, I love it; and who shall dare 
To chide me for loving that old arm-chair 1 
I've treasured it long as a sainted prize, [sighs; 
I've bedew'd it with tears, and enibahu'd it- with 
'T is bound by a thousand hands to my heart; 
Not a tie will break, not a link will start. 
Would ye learn the spell ] a mother sat there. 
And a sacred thing is that old arm-chair. 

In childhood's hour I linger'd near 

The hallow'd seat with listening ear ; 

And gentle words tiiat mother would give, 

To fit me to die and teach me to live. 

She told me shame would never betide. 

With truth for my creed and God for my guide; 

She taught me to lisp my earliest prayer, 

As I knelt beside that old arm-chair. 

I sat and watch'd hor many a day, 

When her eye grew dim, and her locks were gray ; 

And I almost worshipp'd her when she smiled 

And turn'd from her Bible to bless her child. 

Years roll'd on, but the last one sped — 

My idol was shatter'd, my earth-star fled ; 

I learnt how much the heart can bear. 

When I saw her die in that old arm-chair. 



'Tis past! 'tis past ! but I gaze on it now 
With quivering breath and throl)bing brow : 
'Twas there she nursed me, 'twas there she died ; 
And memory flows with lava tide. 
Say it is folly, and deem me weak, 
While the scalding drops start down my cheek ; 
But I love it, I love it, and cannot tear 
My soul from a mother's old arm-chair. 



MY GRAVE. 

SwKET is the ocean grave, under the azure wave, 
Where the rich coral the sea-grot illumes; 

Where pearls and amber meet, decking the wind- 
ing-sheet, 
Malting the sailor's the brightest of tombs. 

Let the proud soldier rest, wrapt in his gory vest, 
Where he may happen to tall on his shield, 

To sink in the glory-strife was his first hope in life ; 
Dig him his grave on the red battle-field. 

Lay the one great and rich in the strong cloister 
Give him his coffin of cedar and gold ; [niche. 

Let the wild torch-light fall, flouting the velvet pall, 
Lock him in marble vault, darksome and cold. 

But there's a sunny hill, fondly remembcr'd still, 
Crown'd with fair grass and a bonnie elm tree : 

Fresh as the foamy surf, sacred as churchyard turf. 
There be the resting-place chosen by me ! 

Though the long formal prayer ne'er has been ut- 
ter'd there. 

Though the robed priest has not hallow'd the sod; 
Yet would r dare to ask any in saintly mask 

" Where is the spot that's unwatch'd by a God !" 

There the wind loud and strong whistles its winter 

song. 

Shrill in its wailing and fierce in its sweep ; 

'T is music now sweet and dear, loved by my soul 

and ear ; 

Let it breathe on where I sleep the last sleep. 

There in the summer days rest the bright flashing 
rays, 

There spring the wild-flowers — fair as can be : 
Daisy and pimpernel, lily and cowslip bell. 

These be the grave-flowers chosen by me. 

There would I lie alone, mark'd by no sculptured 
stone. 
Few will regret when my spirit departs; 
And I loathe the vain charnel fame, praising an 
enijity name, 
Dear, after all, but to two or three hearts. 

Who does not turn and laugh at the false epitaph, 
Painting man spotless and pure as the dove 1 

If augiit of goodly v\'orth grace my career on earth, 
All that I heed is its record above. 

'Tis on that sunny hill, fondly remember'd still, 
Where my young footsteps climb'd happy and 
free ; 

Fresh as the foamy surf, sacred as churchyard turf, 
There be the sleeping-place chosen by me. 



496 



ELIZA COOK. 



THERE'S A STAR IN THE WEST. 

There's a star in the west that shall never go down 

Till the records of valour dcca}' ; 
We must worship ils light, though it is not our own, 

For liberty burst in its ray. 
Shall the name of a Washington ever be heard 

By a freeman, and thrill not his breast] 
Is there one out of bondage that hails not the word 

As the Bethlehem star of the west ! 

" War, war to the knife ! be enthrall'd or ye die," 

Was the echo that woke in his land ; 
But it was not his voice that promoted the cry, 

Nor his madness that kindled the brand. 
He raised not his arm, he defied not his foes, 

While a leaf of the olive rcmain'd ; 
Till goaded with insult, his spirit arose 

Like a long-baited lion unchain'd. 

He struck with firm courage the blow of the brave, 

But sigh'd o'er the carnage that spread : 
He indignantly trampled the yoke of the slave, 

But wept for the thousands that bled. [strife. 
Though he threw back the fetters and headed the 

Till man's charter was fairly restored ; [life 

Yet he pray'd for the moment when freedom and 

Would no longer be press'd by the sword. 

Oh! his laurels were pure; and his patriot name 

In the page of the future shall dwell, 
And be seen in alf annals, the foremost in fame. 

By the side of a Hofer and Tell. 
Revile not my song, for the wise and the good 

Among Britons have nobly confess'd 
That his was the glory and ours was the blood 

Of the deeply-stain'd field of the west. 



MOURN NOT THE DEAD. 

MoTjR!f not the dead, — shed not a tear 
Above the moss-stain'd sculptured stone. 

And weep for those whose living woes 
Still yield the bitter, rending groan. 

Grieve not to pee the eyelids close 
In rest that has not fever'd start; 

Wish not to break the deep repose 

That curtains round the pulseless heart. 

But keep thy pity for the eyes 

That pray for night, yet fear to sleep, 

Lest wilder, sadder visions rise 

Than those o'er which they waking weep. 

Mourn not the dead, — 'tis they alone 
Who are the peaceful and the free ; 

The purest olive-branch is known 
To twine about the cypress tree. 

Crime, pride, and passion, hold no more 
The willing or the struggling slave; 

The throbbing pangs of love are o'er, 
And hatred dwells not in the grave. 



The world may pour its venom'd blame. 

And fiercely spurn the shroud-wrapp'd bier; 

Son)c few may call upon the name, 
And sigh to meet a dull, cold ear. 

But vain the scorn that would offend. 
In vain the lips that would beguile ; 

The coldest foe, the warmest friend. 

Are mock'd by death's unchanging smile. 

The only watchword that can tell 
Of peace and freedom won by all. 

Is echo'd by the tolling bell. 

And traced upon the sable pall ! 



THE LOVED ONE WAS NOT THERE. 

We gather'd round the festive board, 

The crackling fagot blazed. 
But few would taste the wine that pour'd, 

Or join the song we raised. 
For there was now a glass unfiU'd — 

A favour'd place to spare ; 
All eyes were dull, all hearts were chill'd — 

The loved one was not there. 

No happy laugh vi'as heard to ring, 

No form would lead the dance; 
A smother'd sorrow seem'd to fling 

A gloom in every glance. 
The grave has closed upon a biow. 

The honest, bright, and fair; 
W^e miss'd our mate, we mourn'd the blow — 

The loved one was not there. 



THE QUIET EYE. 

TiiK orb I like is not the one 

That dazzles with its lightning gleam, 
That dares to look upon the sun 

As though it challenged brighter beam. 
That orb may sparkle, flash, and roll ; 

Its fire may blaze, its shaft may fly; 
But not for me: I prize the soul 

That slumbers in a quiet eye. 

There's something in its placid shade 

That tells of calm unworldly thought; 
Hope may be crown'd, or joy delay'd — 

No dimness steals, no ray is caught: 
Its pensive language seems to say, 

" I know that I must close and die ;" 
And death itself, come when it may, 

Can hardly change the quiet eye. 

There's meaning in its steady glance. 

Of gentle blame or praising love. 
That makes me tremble to advance 

A word that meaning might reprove. 
The haughty threat, the fiery look. 

My spirit proudly can defy; 
But never yet could meet and brook 

The upbraiding of a quiet eye. 



=11 



ELIZA COOK. 



497 



There's firmness in its even light, 

That augurs of a hrcast sincere; 
And, oil ! take watch how yc excite 

That firiniioss till it yield a tear. 
Some hosoms give an easy sigii, 

8ome drops of grief will freely start; 
But that which sears the quiet eye 

Hath its deep fountain in the heart. 



SONG OF THE HEMPSEED. 

At, scatter me well, 'tis a moist spring day, 

Wide and far he the hempsecd sown. 
And bravely I'll stand on the autumn land 

When the rains have dropp'd and the winds 
have blown. 
Man shall carefully gather me up, 

His hand shall rule and my form shall change. 
Not as a mate for the purple of state. 

Nor into aught that is " rich and strange." 
But I will come forth all woven and spun. 

With my fine threads curl'd in serpent length. 
And the firc-vvrought chain, and the lion's thick 
mane. 

Shall be rivall'd by me in mighty strength. 
I have many a place in the busy world. 

Of triumph and fear, of sorrow and joy ; 
I carry the freeman's flag unfurl'd, 

I am link'd to childhood's darling toy. 
Then scatter me wide, and hackle me well, 
For a varied tale can the hempseed tell. 

Bravely I swing in the anchor ring 

Where the foot of the proud man cometh not. 
Where the dolphin leaps, and the sea-weed creeps 

O'er the rifted sand and coral grot. 
Down, down below I merrily go 

When the huge ship takes her rocking rest ; 
The waters may chafe, but she dwelleth as safe 

As the young bird in its woodland nest. 
I wreathe the spars of that same fair ship 

Where the gallant sea-hearts cling about, 
Springing aloft with a song on the lip. 

Putting their faith in the cordage stout. 
I am true when the blast sways the giant mast, 

Straining and stretch'd in a nor'west gale ; 
I abide with the bark, in the day and the dark, 

Lashing the hammock and reefing the sail. 
Oh, the billows and I right fairly cope. 
And the wild tide is stemm'd by the cable rope. 

Sons of evil, bad and hold. 

Madly ye live and little ye reck, 
Till I am noosed in a coiling fold 

Ready to hug your felon neck. 
The yarn is smooth and the knot is sure, 

I will lie firm to the task I take ; 
Thinly they twine the halter line, 

Yet when does the halter hitch or break 7 
My leaves are light and my flowers arc bright — 

Fit for an infant hand to clasp; 
But what think yc of me, 'neath the gibbet-tree, 

Daagiing high in the hangman's grasp ! 
63 



Oh, a terrible thing does the hempseed seem 
Twixt the hollow floor and stout cross-beam 1 

The people rejoice, the banners are spread ; 

There is frolic and feasting in cottage and hall ; 
The festival shout is echoing out 

From trellis'd porch and gothic wall.; 
Merry souls hie to the belfry tower. 

Gaily they laugh when I am found, [shake 

And rare music they make, till the quick peals 

The ivy that wraps the turret round : 
The hempseed lives with the old church bell, 
And helpeth the holiday ding-dong-dell. 

The sunshine falls on a new-made grave 1 

The funeral tr.iin is long and sad ; 
The poor man has come to the happiest home, 

And easiest pillow be ever had. 
I shall be there to lower him down 

Gently into his narrow bed ; 
I shall be there, the work to share, 

To guard his feet, and cradle his head. 
I may be seen on the hillock green. 

Flung aside with the bleaching skull. 
While the earth is thrown with worm and bone, 

'J'ill the sexton has done, and the grave is full. 
Back to the gloomy vault I'm borne. 

Leaving coffin and nail to crumble and rust. 
There I am laid with the mattock and spade, 

Moisten'd with tears and clogg'd with dust : 
Oh, the hempseed cometh in doleful shape. 
With the mourner's cloak and sable crape. 

Harvest shall spread with its glittering wheat ; 

The barn shall he open'd, the stack shall be piled ; 
Ye shall see the ripe grain shining out from the wain, 

And the berry-stain'd arms of the gleaner-child. 
Heap on, heap on, till the wagon-ribs creak. 

Let the sheaves go towering to the sky. 
Up with the shock till the broad wheels rock, 

Fear not to carry the rich freight high. 
For I will infold the tottering gold, 

I will fetter the rolling load ; 
Not an ear shall escape my binding hold, 

On the furrow'd field or jolting road : 
Oh, the hempseed hath a fair place to fill, 
With the harvest band on the corn-crow n'd hill. 

My threads are set in the heaving net. 

Out with the fisher-boy far at sea. 
While he whistles a tune to the lonely moon, 

And trusts for his morrow's bread to me. 
Toiling away through the dry summer-day, 

Round and round I steadily twist. 
And bring from the cell of the deep old well 

What is rarely prized but sorely iniss'd. 
In the whirling swing — in the peg-top string, 

There am I, a worshipp'd slave. 
On ocean and earth I'm a goodly thing, 

I serve from the play-ground to the grave. 
I have many a place in the busy world, 

Of triumi)li and fear, of sorrow and joy ; 
I carry the freeman's flag unfuiTd, 

And am link'd to childhood's darling toy : 
Then scatter me wide, and hackle me well, 
And a varied tale shall the hempseed tell. 
2t9 



498 



ELIZA COOK. 



WASHINGTON. 

Land of the west ! though passing brief 

The record of thine age, 
Thou hast a name that darkens all 

On history's wide page ! 
Let all the blasts of fame ring out — 

Thine shall be loudest far : 
Let others boast their satellites — 

Thou hast the planet star. 

Thou hast a name whose characters 

Of light shall ne'er depart ; 
'Tis stamp'd upon the dullest brain, 

And warms the coldest heart ; 
A war-cry fit for any land 

Where freedom's to be won. 
Land of the west ! it stands alone — 

It is thy Washington ! 

Rome had its Cssar, great and brave ; 

But stain was on his wreath : 
He lived the heartless conqueror, 

And died the tyrant's death. 
France had its eagle ; but his wings, 

Though lofty they might soar, 
Were spread in false ambition's flight. 

And dipp'd in murder's gore. 

Those hero-gods, whose mighty swav 

Would fain have chain'd the waves 

Who flesh'd their blades with tiger zeal. 

To make a world of slaves — 
Who, though their khidred barr'd the path. 

Still fiercely waded on — 
Oh, where shall be fheir "glory" by 

The side of Washington ? 

He fought, but not with love of strife , 

He struck but to defend ; 
And ere he tuni'd a people's foe. 

He sought to be a friend. 
He strove to keep his country's right. 

By reason's gentle word, 
And sigh'd when fell injustice threw 

The challenge — sword to sword. 

He stood the firm, the calm, the wise 

The patriot and sage ; 
He show'd no deep, avenging hate — 

No burst of despot rage. 
He stood for liberty and truth. 

And dauntlcssly led on. 
Till shouts of victory gave forth. 

The name of Washington. 

No car of triumph bore him through, 

A city lill'd with grief; 
No groaning captives at the wheels, 

Proclaim'd him victor chief; 
He broke the gyves of slavery • 

With strong and high disdain, 
And cast no sceptre from the links 

When he had crush'd the chain. 



He saved his land, but did not lay 

His soldier trappings down 
To change them for the regal vest, 

And don a kingly crown. 
Fame was too earnest in her joy — 

Too proud of such a son — 
To let a robe and title mask 

A noble Washington. 

England, my heart is truly thine — 

My loved, my native earth ! — 
The land that holds a mother's grave, 

And gave that mother birth I 
Oh, keenly sad would be the fate 

That thrust me from thy shore, 
And faltering my breath, that sigh'd, 

" Farewell for evermore !" 

But did I meet such adverse lot, 

I would not seek to dwell 
Where olden heroes wrought the deeds 

For Homer's song to tell. 
Away, thou gallant ship ! I'd cry, 

And bear me swiftly on : 
But bear me from my own fair land, 

To that of Washina:ton ! 



OUR NATIVE SONG. 

Oun native song ! our native song ! 

Oh ! where is he who loves it noti 
The spell it holds is deep and strong. 

Where'er we go, whate'er our lot. 
Let other music greet our ear 

With thrilling fire or dulcet tone ; 
We speak to praise, we pause to hear. 

But yet — oh ! yet — 'tis not our own ! 
The anthem chant, the ballad wild. 

The notes that we remember long — 
The theme we sung with lisping tongue — 

'Tis this we love — our native song ! 

The one who bears the felon's brand, 

W^ith moody brow and darken'd name, 
Thrust meanly from his father-land. 

To languish out a life of shame ; 
Oh ! let him hear some simple strain — 

Some lay his mother taught her boy — 
He'll feel the charm, and dream again 

Of home, of innocence, and joy ! 
The sigh will burst, the drops will start, 

And all of virtue, buried long — 
The best, the purest in his heart, 

Is waken'd by his native song. 

Self-exiled from our place of birth. 

To climes more fragrant, brisht, and gay 
The memory of our own fair earth 

May chance awhile to fade away : 
But should some minstrel echo fall. 

Of chords that breathe old England's fame, 
Our souls will burn, our spirits yearn. 

True to the land we love and claim. 
The high ! the low ! in weal or wo. 

Be sure there's something coldly wrong 
About the heart that does not glow 

To hear its own, its native song. 



B. SIMMONS. 



Mr. Simmons has been several years a con- 
tributor to Blackwood's Magazine, and in 



1843 he published a volume of poems entitled 
Legends and Lyrics. 



THE DISINTERMENT. 

Lost Lord of Song ! who grandly gave 

Thy matchless timbrel for the spear — 
And, by old Hellas' hallow'd wave 

Died at the feet of Freedom — hear! 
Hear — from thy lone and lowly tomb, 

Where mid thy own " inviolate Isle," 
Beneath no minster's marble gloom, 

No banner's golden smile, 
Far from the swarming city's crowd, 
Thy glory round thee for a shroud. 
Thou sleepest, — the pious rustic's tread 
The only echo o'er thy bed. 
Save, few and faint, when o'er the foam 
The pilgrims of thy genius come. 
From distant earth, with tears of praise, 
The homage of their hearts to raise, 
And curse the country's very name, 

Unworthy of thy sacred dust. 
That draws such lustre from thy fame. 

That heaps such outrage on thy bust ! 
Wake from the dead — and lift thy brow 
With the same scornful beauty now. 
As when beneath thy shafts of pride 
Envenom'd cant — the Python — died ! 
Prophet no less than bard, behold 
Matured the eventful moment, told 
In those divine predictive words 
Pour'd to the lyre's transcendent chords : — 
" If e'er his awful ashes can grow cold — 
But no,theirembers soon shall bursttheirmould — 

France shall feel the want 

Of this last consolation, though but scant. 

Her honour, fame, and faith demand his bones, 

To pile above a pyramid of thrones !" 

If, then, from thy neglected bier, 

One humblest follower thou canst hear, 

O mighty Master ! rise and flee. 

Swift as some meteor bold and bright, 
With me thy cloud, attending thee, 

Across the dusky tracts of night, 
To where the sunset's latest radiance shone 
O'er Afric's sea interminably lone. 

Below that broad unbroken sea 

Long since the sultry sun has dropp'd, 

And now in dread solemnity 

— As though its course Creation stopp'd 

One wondrous hour, to watch the birth 

Of deeds portentous unto earth — 

The moonless midnight far and wide. 
Solidly black, flings over all 



The giant waste of waveless tide 

Her melancholy pall. 
Whose folds in thickest gloom unfurl'd, 

Each ray of heaven's high face debar. 
Save, on the margin of the world 

Where leans yon solitary star, 
Large, radiant, restless, tinting with far smile 
The jagged cliffs of a gray barren Isle. 

Hark ! o'er the waves distinctly swell 

Twelve slow vibrations of a bell ! 

And out upon the silent car 

At once ring bold and sharply clear. 

With shock more startling than if thunder 

Had split the slumbering earth asunder, 

The iron sounds of crow and bar ; 

Ye scarce may know from whence they come, 
WHrether from island or from star. 

Both lie so hush'd and dumb! 
On, swift and deep, those echoes sweep. 
Shaking long-buried kings from sleep — 
Up, up ! ye sceptred Jailers — ho ! 

Your granite heaped his head in vain ; 
The very grave gives back your foe — 

Dead CiEsar wakes again ! 
The nations, with a voice as dread 

As that which once in Bethany 
Burst to the regions of the dead. 

And set the loved-one free. 
Have cried, " Come forth !" and lo ! again. 
To smite the hearts and eyes of men 
With the old awe he once instill'd 
By many an unforgotten field, 
Napoleon's look shall startle day — 

"That look that, where its anger fell, 
Scorch'd empires from the earth away 

As with the blasts of hell ! 

Up — from the dust, ye sleepers, ho ! 

By the blue Danube's stately wave — 
From Berlin's towers — from Moscow's snow. 

And Windsor's gorgeous grave ! 
Come — summon'd by the omnific power. 
The spirit of this thrilling hour — 
And, stooping from yon craggy height. 
Girt by each perish'd satellite, 
Each cunning tool of kingly terror 
Who served your reigns of fraud and error. 
Behold, where with relentless lock 
Ye chain'd Prometheus to his rock. 
And, when his tortured bosom ceased 
Your vulture's savage beak to feast. 
Where fathom-deep ye dug hisxell, 

And built and barr'd his coffin down, 

499 



500 B. SIMMONS. 


Half doubting if even death could quell 


Of him whose threshold-steps were thrones, 


Such terrible renown ; 


A mockery now to earth 1 


Now miJ the torch's solemn glare, 


No — even as though his haughty clay 


And bended knee, and mutter'd 7)rayer, 


Scotf'd at the contact of decay, 


Witliiii that green sepulchral gUni 


And from his mind's immortal flame 


UiK'Over'd groups of warrior men 


Itself immortalized became. 


Breathless perfjrm tlie high behest 


Tranquilly there Napolkon lies reveal'd, 


Of winning back, in priceless trust, 


Like a king sleeping on his own proud shield. 


For the regenerated West, 


Harness'd for conflict, and that eagle-star, 


Your victim's mighty dust. 


Whose fire-eyed legion foremost waked the war, 


Hark ! how they burst your cramps and rings — 


Still on his bosom, tarnish'd too and dim, 


Ha, ha ! ye banded, baffled kings ! 


As if hot battle's cloud had lately circled him. 


Stout men ! delve on with axe and bar, 


Fast fades the vision — from that glen 


Ye're watch'd from yonder restless star: 


Wind slow those aching-hearted men, 


Hew the toii<i;h masonry away — 


While every mountain echo floats, 


Bid the tomb's ponderous portals fly ! 


Fill'd with the bugle's regal notes — 


And firm your sounding levers sway, 


And now the gun's redoubled roar 


And loud your clanking hammers ply ; 


' Tells the lone peak and mighty main, 


Nor falter though the work be slow, 


Beneath his glorious Tricolor 


Ye something gain in every blow, 


Napoleon rests again ! 


While deep each heart in chorus sings, 


And France's galley soon the sail 


*' Ha, ha ! ye banded, baffled kings !" 


Shall spread triumphant to the gale ; 


Brave men ! delve on with axe and bar. 


Till, lost upon the lingering eye. 


Ye're watch'd from yonder glorious star. 


It melts and mingles in the sky. 


'Tis morn the marble floor is cleft, 


Let Paris, too, prepare a show. 


And slight and short the labour left; 


And deck her streets in gaudy wo ; 


'Tis noon they wind the windlass now 


An<! rear a more than kingly shrine. 


To heave the granite from his brow : 


Whose tapers' blaze shall ne'er be dim. 


Back to each gazer's wailing heart 


And bid the sculptor's art divine 


The life-blood leaps with anxious start — 


Be lavish'd there for him. 


Down Bertrand's cheek the tear-drop steals — 


And let him take his rest serene, 


Low in the dust Las Casas kneels, 


(Even so he will'd it) by the Seine; 


,(0h! Tried and trusted — still, as long 


But ever to the poet's heart, 


As the true heart's fidelity 


Or pilgrim musing o'er those pages 


Shall form the theme of harp and song, 


(Replete with marvels) that impart ^ 


High bards shall sing of ye !) 


His story unto ages, 


One moment, and thy beams, sun ! 


The spacious azure of yon sea 


The bier of him shall look upon. 


Alone his minster floor shall be. 


Who, save the heaven-expell'd, alone 


Coped by the stars — red evening's smile 


Dared envy thee thy blazing throne ; 


His epitaph ; and thou, rude Isle, 


Who haply oft, with gaze intent, 


Austerely-brow'd and thunder rent, 


And sick from victory's vulgar war, 


Napoleon's only monument ! 


Panted to sweep the firmament. 




And dash thee from thy car. 
And cursed the clay that still confined 






His narrow conquests to mankind. 


VIEW ON THE HUDSON. 


'Tis done — his chiefs are lifting now 




The shroud from that tremendous brow. 


SouN^n to the sun thy solemn joy for ever I 


I That with the lightning's rapid might 


Roll forth the enormous gladness of thy waves. 


Illumed Marengo's awful night — 


Mid boundless bloom, thou bright majestic river. 


Flash'd over Lodi's murderous bridge, 


Worthy the giant land thy current laves ! 


Swept Prussia from red Jena's ridge. 


Each bend of beauty, from the stooping cliff. 


And broke once more the Austrian sword 


Whose shade is dotted by the fisher's skiff, — 


By Wagram's memorable ford. 


From rocks embattled, that, abrupt and tall, 


And may man's puny race, that shook 


Heave their bulk skyward like a castle-wall, 


Before the terrors of that look. 


And hem thee in, until the Rapids hoarse 


Approach unshrinking now, and see 


Split the huge marble with an earthquake's force. 


How far corruption's mastery 


To where thy waves are sweet with summer scents. 


Has tamed the tyrant-tamer 1 


Flung from the Highland's softer lineaments — 


Raise 


Each lovelier change thy broadening billows take, 


That silken cloud, what meets the gaze 1- 


Now sweeping on, now like some mighty lake. 


The scanty 3ust, or whitening bones, 


Stretching away where evening-tinted isles 


Or fleshless jaws' horrific mirth, 


Woo thee to linger mid their rosy smiles — 



B. SIMMONS. 



501 



The lonely cove — the village-humming hill — 
The green dell lending thee its fairy rill — 
All, all, arc old familiar scenes to one 
Who tracks thee but by Amcy's aid alone. 

Yet well his boyhood's earnest hours adored 
Thy haunted headlands, since he first explored 
With Weld the vast and shadowy recesses 
Of tiieir grand woods and verdant wildernesses; 
Since first lie open'd the enchanted books 
(Whose words are silver liquid as the brook's) 
Of that loved wanderer, who told the west 
Van Winkle's wondrous tale, and fiU'd each breast 
By turns with awe, delight, or blithe emotion, 

Painting the life thy forest-shadows knew, 
What time the settlers, crowding o'er the ocean, 

Spread their white sails along thy waters blue. 

Theirs were the hearts true liberty bestows — 

The valour that adventure lights in men ; 
And in their children still the metal glows. 

As well can witness each resounding glen 
.Of the fair scene, whose mellow colours shine 

Beneath the splendour of yon evening orb, 
That sinks serene as Washington's decline. 

Whose memory here should meaner thoughts 
absorb. 
//'?•« rose the ramparts, never rear'd in vain 
When Justice smites in two the oppressor's chain; 
H(ire, year on year, through yonder heaven of blue, 
'J'he bomb's hot wrath its rending volleys threw 
Against those towers, which, scorning all attack, 
Still roll'il the assailants' shatler'd battle back; 
Till, as they fled in final rout, behind 
Soar'd the Republic's flag, high-floating in the wind! 

Long may that star-emolazoned banner wave 
Its folds triumphant o'er a land so brave, 
Fann'd by no breeze but that which wafts us nov? 
The laugh of Plenty, leaning on the plough. 
And should Columbia's iron-hearted men 
Try the fierce fortune of the sword again. 
Be theirs to wield it in no wanton cause. 
Fired by no braggart orators' applause, 
In no red conflict, whose unrighteous tide 
Could call nor Truth nor Mercy to their side, 
So may their empire still supremely sweep 
From age to age the illimitable deep, 
With sway surpassing all but her proud reign, 
Whose hand reposes on her lion's mane — 
The Ocean Queen — within whose rude isle lock'd 
Tlieir own stern fathers' infancy was rock'd ; 
Where first they breathed, amid the bracing north. 
Fair Freedom's spirit, till she sent them forth — 
Her cloud above their exodus unfurl'd — 
To spread her worship o'er a second world. 



DEATH-CHANT FOR THE SULTAN 
MAHMOUD. 

R.MSK the song to the mighty, whose glory shall die 
When the moon of his empire has droi>[)'d from the 

sky; 
And if wail be awaken'd for him who smote down 
Grim bigotry's Moloch, guilt's bloody renown, 



Be it lost in the trumpet's magnificent wo. 
From the Bos|ihorus swelling. 
To Christendom telling 

That the fiery Rome-tramplers' descendant is low. 

By the Prophet ! remember his terrible mirth, 
When he swept the Janitzars as stubble from earth ; 
On the domes of Sophia like midnight he stood. 
The avenger of Selim's and Mustapha's blood! 
Red dogs of rebellion, with tearing and yell 

And chain'd valour's despair. 

In their own savage lair, 
Mow'd down beneath cannon and carbine they fell. 

Raise the song to the mighty ! high Mahmoud, 

whose stroke 
In a moment the fetters of centuries broke !• 
Far kings of the west, how your trophies grow dim 
In the light of the fame that awaiteth for him ! 
The contemner of Korans, who, girded by foes, 

The Ark of salvation 

First launch'd for his nation. 
When the press mid the curses of fanatics rose. 

Hu Alia — hu Alia! the blest caravan 
Is in sight from Damascus, and Mecca is wan — 
Sheik and Iinam are trembling with terror and awe, 
For this Cadmus of Caliphs has laugh'd at the law : 
Fair painting must sully the Prophet's proud tomb. 

For Athene, not loth, 

Has left Greece to the Goth, 
And planted her arts-shading olive in Roum. 

In vain, Ghazi-Sultaun ! when Pera's sweet shore 
In the blue of Propontis is rosy no more — 
When Olympus no longer on Thrace looks abroad. 
And the name of the Frank shall not signify fraud. 
Then the slaves shall be worthy the war-vest, and 
then. 

When thy spirit imparts 

To their recreant hearts 
Its grandeur, thy horse-tails may flap over men. 

Sound the trump for the mighty! great Allah thy 

son 
With Azrel, the angel unsparing, is gone ! 
While round his shrunk borders the thunder was 

growling, 
And the Muscovite wolves thickly herded were 

howling, 
And snuffing the gales that, refreshingly cool. 
On their merciless thirst 
In wild redolence burst, 
Where, bulwark'd in gold, blush the brides of Stam- 

boul. 

Sound the trump for the mighty ! he died ere the 

tramp 
Of the terror-horsed Tartar who dash'd from the 

camp 
Stay'd his soul with the tale that liis dastardly hordes 
Lay reap'd upon Nekshib, where sickles were 

swords ! 
And the lords of the spear's haughty kingdom has 

past 
To the Rebel and Hun ! 
And the death-song is done: 
But thy praise shall not perish, lost Mahmoud the 

Last! 



F. W. F A B E R. 



l\Ir. Faber is a young clergyman of the 
established church, and is the author of 
The Cherwell Water-Lily and other Poems, 
published in 1840, and Sir Launcelot, in 



the summer of 1844. His style is simple 
and poetical, and his productions are gene- 
rally serious in sentiment and earnest in 
thought. 



KING'S BRIDGE. 

The dew falls fast, and the night is dark, 
And the trees stand silent in the park ; 
And winter passeth from bough to bough, 
With stealthy foot that none may know; 
But little the old man thinks he weaves 
His frosty kiss on the ivy leaves. 

From bridge to bridge with tremulous fall 
The river droppeth down, 

And it washcth the base of a pleasant hall 
On the skirts of Cambridge town. 
Old trees by night are like men in thought, 
By poetr}^ to silence wrought ; 
They stand so still and they look so wise, 
With folded arms and half-shut eyes, 
More shadowy than the shade they cast 
When the wan moonlight on the river past. 

The river is green, and runneth slow — 
We cannot tell what it saith ; 

It keepeth its secrets down below, 
And so doth Death ! 

Oh ! the night is dark ; but not so dark 
As my poor soul in this lonely park : 
There are festal lights by the stream, that fall, 
Like stars, from the casements of yonder hall 
But harshly the sounds of jovaunce grate 
On one that is crush'd and desolate. 

From bridge to bridge with tremulous fall 
The river droppeth down. 

As it washeth the base of a pleasant hall 
On the skirts of Cambridge town. 
O Mary ! Mary I could I but hear 
What this river saith in night's still ear. 
And catch the faint whispering voice it brings 
From its lowlands green and its reedy springs : 
It might tell of the spot where the graybeard's spade 
Turn'd the cold wet earth in the lime-tree shade. 

The river is green, and runneth slow — 
We cannot tell what it saith : 

It keepeth its secrets down below, 
And so doth Death ! 

For death was born in thy blood with life — 
Too holy a f >unt for such sad strife : 
Like a secret curse from hour to hour 
The ranker grew wi'h the growitig flower; 
And little we deem'd that rosy streak 
Was the tyrant's seal on thy virgin cheek. 
5 2" 



From bridge to bridge with tremulous fall 

The river droppeth down. 
As it washeth the base of a pleasant hall 
On the skirts of Cambridge town. 
But fainter and fainter thy bright eyes grew. 
And redder and redder that rosy hue; 
And the half-shed tears that never fell, 
And the pain within thou wouldst not tell, 
And the wild, wan smile, — all spoke of death. 
That had wither'd my chosen with his breath. 
The river is green, and runneth slow — 

We cannot tell what it saith : 
It keepeth its secrets down below. 
And so doth Death ! 

'Twas o'er thy harp, one day in June, 
I marvell'd the strings were out of tune; 
But lighter and quicker the music grew, 
And deadly white was thy rosy hue ; 
One moment — and back the colour came, 
Thou calledst me by my Christian name. 

From bridge to bridge with tremulous fall 
The river droppeth down. 

As it washeth the base of a pleasant hall 
On the skirts of Cambridge town. 
Thou badest me be silent and bold. 
But my brain was hot, and my heart was cold. 
I never wept, and I never spake. 
But stood like a rock where the salt seas break; 
And to this day I have shed no tear 
O'er my blighted love and my chosen's bier. 

The river is green, and runneth slow — 
We cannot tell what it saith : 

It keepeth its secrets down below, 
And so doth Death ! 

I stood in the church with burning brow, 
The lips of the priest moved solemn and slow. 
I noted each pause, and counted each swell, 
As a sentry numbers a minute-iiell ; 
For unto the mourner's heart they call 
From the deeps of that wondrous ritual. 

From bridge to bridge with tremulous fall 
The river droppeth down. 

As it washeth the base of a pleasant hall 
On the skirts of Cambridge town. 
My spirit was lost in a mystic scene, 
Where the sun and moon in silvery sheen 
Were belted with stars on emerald winsrs. 
And fishes and beasts, and all fleshly things, 



F. W. FABER. 



503 



And the spheres did whirl with laughter and mirth 
Round the grave forefather of the earth. 
The river is green, and runneth slow — 

We cannot tell what it saith : 
It keepeth its secrets down below, 
And so doth Death ! 

The dew falls fast, and the night is dark; 

The trees stand silent in the park. 

The festal lights have all died out. 

And naught is heard but a lone owl's shout. 

The mists keep gathering more and more; 

But the stream is silent as before. 

From bridge to bridge with tremulous fall 

The river droppeth down, 
As it washeth the base of a pleasint hall 

On the skirts of Cambridge town. 
Why should I think of m}' boyhood's bride 
As I vi'alk by this low-voiced river's side 1 
And why should its heartless waters seem 
Jiike a horrid thought in a feverish dream 1 
But it will not speak ; and it keeps in its bed 
The words that are sent us from the dead. 
The river is green, and runneth slow — 

We cannot tell what it saith ; 
It keepeth its secrets down below, 

And so doth Death ! 



CHILDHOOD. 

TO MY ONJ.Y SISTER. 

Dost thou remember how we lived at home — 
That it was like an oriental place, [come 

Where right and wrong, and praise and blame did 
By ways we wonder'd at and durst not trace; 

And gloom and sadness were but shadows thrown 

From griefs that were our sire's and not our own? 

It was a moat about our souls, an arm 

Of sea, that made the world a foreign shore; 

And we were too enamour'd of the charm 

To dream that barks might come and waft us o'er. 

Cold snow was on the hills; and they did w-ear 

Too wild and wan a look to tempt us there. 

We had traditions of our own, to weave 
' A web of creed and rite and sacred thought ; 
And when a stranger, who did not believe 

As they who were our types of God had taught. 
Came to our home, how harsh his words did seem 
Like sounds that mar, but cannot break a dream. 

And then in Scripture some high things there were, 
Of which, they said, we must not read or talk; 

And we, through fear, did never trespass there, 
But made our Bibles like our twilight walk 

In the deep woodland.s, where we durst not roam 

To spots from whence we could not see our home. 

Albeit we fondly hoped, when we were men. 
To learn the lore our parents loved so well. 

And read the rites and symbols which were then 
But letters of a word we could not spell — 

Church-bells, and Sundays when we did not play, 

And sacraments at which we might not stay. 



But we too soon from our safe place were driven ; 

The world broke in upon our orphan'd life. 
Dawnings of good, young flowers that look'd to 
Heaven, 

It left untill'd for what seem'd manlier strife; 
Like a too early summer, bringing fruit 
Where spring perchance had meant another shoot! 

Some begin life too soon, — like sailors thrown 
Upon a shore where common things look strange! 

Like them they roam about a foreign town. 

And grief awhile may own the force of change. 

Yet, though one hour new dress and tongue may 
please. 

Our second thoughts look homeward, ill at ease. 

Come then unto our childhood's wreck again — 
The rocks hard by our father's early grave ; 

And take the few chance treasures that remain, 
And live through manhood upon what we save. 

So shall we roam the same old shore at will! 

In the fond faith that we are children still. 

Christian ! thy dream is now — it was not then: 
Oh! it were strange if childhood were a dream. 

Strife and the world are dreams: to wakeful men 
Childhood and home as jealous angels seem : 

Like shapes and hues that play in clouds at even, 

They have but shifted from thee into heaven ! 



THE GLIMPSE. 

Our many deeds, the thoughts that we have thought, 
They go out from us, thronging every hour; 
And in them all is folded up a power 

That on the earth doth move them to and fro : 
And mighty are the marvels they have wrought 

In hearts we know not, and may never know. 
Our actions travel an^ are veil'd : and yet 

We sometimes catch a fearful glimpse of one, 

When out of sight its march hath well-nigh gone ; 
An unveil'd thing which we can ne'er forget ! 
AH sins it gathers up into its course, 
And they do grow with it, and are its force : 
One day, with dizzy speed that thing shall come, 
Recoiling on the heart that was its home. 



THE PERPLEXITY. 

AxD, therefore, when I look into my heart. 
And see how full it is of mighty schemes. 
Some that shall ripen, some be ever dreams, 
And yet, though dreams, shall act a real part: 
When I behold of what and how great things 
I am the cause ; how quick the living springs 
That vil)rate in me, and how far they go, — 
Thought doth but seem anothi^r name for fear; 

And I would fain sit still and n^^vrr rise 
To meddle with myself. — God feels so near. 
And, all the time, he nio\;-fh, calm and slow 

And unpcrplex'd, tli'Ugh naked to His eyes 
A thousand thousand spirits pictured are, 
Kenn'd through the ^h"- riid that wraps the heaven 
of heavens afar ! 



504 



F. W. F A B E R. 



TO A LITTLE BOY. 

Dear little one ! and can thy mother find 
In those soft lineaments, that move so free 
To smi'e'! or tears, as holiest infancy 

About thy heart its glorious web doth wind, 

A faithful likeness of my sterner mind ? 

Ah! then tliere must be limes, unknown to me, 

When my lost boyhood, like a wandering air, 
Comes for a while to pass upon my face, 
Giving me back tlie dear familiar grace 

O'er wliich my mother pour'd her last fond prayer. 

But sin and age will rob me of this power; 
Though now my heart, like an uneasy lake, 
Some broken images, at times, may take 

From forms which fade more sadly every hour ! 



THE AFTER-STATE. 

A SPIRIT came upon me in the night ; 
And led me gently down a rocky stair, 
Unto a peopled garden, green and fair. 
Where all the day there was an evening light. 
Trees out of every nation blended there ; 
The citron shrub its golden fruit did train 
Against an English elm. — 'Twss like a dream, 
Because there was no wind ; and things did seem 
All near and big — like mountains before lain. 
Far in those twilight bowers, beside a stream, 
The soul of one who had but lately died 
Hung listening, with a brother at his side : 
And no one spoke in all that haunted place, — 
But looked quietly into each other's face ! 



THE WHEELS. 

There are strange, solemn times when serious men 
Sink out of depth in their^wn spirit, caught 
All unawares, and held by some strong thought 

That comes to them, they know not how or when, 



And beai's them down through many a winding cell, 
Where the soul's busy agenti darkly dwell; 
Each watching by his wheel, that, bright and bare, 
Kovolveth day and night, to do its part 
In building up for heaven one single heart. 
And moulds of curious form are scatter'd there. 
As yet unused, — the shapes of after deeds: 
And veiled growths and thickly sprouting seeds 
Are strewn, in which our future life doth lie, 
Sketch'd out in dim and wondrous prophecy. 



THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 

The days of old were days of might 
In forms of greatness moulded, 

And flowers of heaven grew on the earth, 
Within the church unfolded ; 

For grace fell fast as summer dew. 

And saints to giant stature grew. 

But, one by one, the gifts are gone 

That in the church resided, 
And gone the spirit's living light 

That on her walls abided. 
When by our shrines He came to dwell 
In power and presence visible. 

A blight hath past upon the church. 

Her summer hath departed. 
The chill of age is on her sons, 

The cold and fearful-hearted : 
And sad, amid neglect and scorn, 
Our mother sits and weeps forlorn. 

Narrow and narrower still each year 

The holy circle groweth. 
And what the end of all shall be 

No man nor angel knoweth: 
And so we wait and watch in fear; 
It may be that the Lord is near! 



THE END. 



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